[nzlug] OMG, I can no longer run 'sudo' !

[Jim Cheetham]

On Sat, Aug 12, 2006 at 11:02:19AM +1200, Craig Box wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-08-12 at 09:21 +1200, Sid Bachtiar wrote:
> > I executed 'sudo usermod -G sid www-data' as suggested in one thread
> > here and now I can no longer run sudo! I tried loging in as root, but
> > it won't let me. What do I do? How do I login as sudo?
> 
> By default, on an Ubuntu machine, you should have been a member of..
> sid adm dialout cdrom floppy audio dip video plugdev lpadmin scanner
> admin

And it's not going to be straightforward to fix; on Ubuntu the root user
is not enabled, so su won't work, and sudo is broken. It's unlikely that
there is another admin user set up on the machine.

Booting from the LiveCD is needed, and then mounting the hard drive, and
probably editing the group file to restore these group memberships.

Anyone got a good set of instructions for this?

-jim