[Solved] User permissions chaos - no user has admin rights

[Opera]

Hi all:

Despite not being a complete newbie wrt Linux I've been completely surpassed by a situation that has arised recently at our company.

My work partner somehow managed to make our only account in the PC not a superuser.

We have Kubuntu 6.10 installed in that machine.

Is there any way to create a new superuser or to modify our account permissions?

Otherwise I'll keep working on my new 8.10 install and trying to get our stock and sales management program working in it (but it's quite longish and painful).

Thanks in advance.

[JohanLingen]

Re: User permissions chaos

I am not sure if your question implies that the root user is gone?

I will assume a 'no' to that: login as root and edit /etc/group
Make sure that the user account is included in the groups 'adm' and 'admin'.

[jamms]

Re: User permissions chaos

on logging in as root

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=50430

[Opera]

Re: User permissions chaos

To clarify:

There's only one user in the machine: Opera.

Passwd for opera let's you log in, but said opera user no longer has root privileges.

I tried logging in as root but I cannot launch neither kate nor kwrite from the konsole with sudo or kdesu.

[JohanLingen]

Re: User permissions chaos

What happens if you press ESC during GRUB countdown and select "Drop to prompt"? Are you root then? If so, edit /etc/group in said way.

--edit--
Sorry, "Drop to prompt" is the Interpid way, in Edgy you can choose the Recovery mode... are you able to login as root?

[toad]

Re: User permissions chaos

If jamms' link doesn't help you this will: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visudo

This is a good lesson about security

[Opera]

Re: User permissions chaos

Getting in in recovery mode did the trick.

I did:

sudoedit /etc/group

added main user to the admin group and saved.

That did the trick.

Thanks lads!