How to: change root password?

[johnswb]

OK, I give up... I've looked on the forum for users that had problems with the root account. I can not do anything. I just install Ubuntu server 7.10 and now when I do "sudo vi anything" I get the following.
"
john is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
john@userver:/$ sendmail: fatal: open /etc/postfix/main.cf: No such file ro directory"

if I do "sudo passwd root" I get the same error.

I really do not want to reinstall if I don't have too. My guess is I will run in to the same problem.

[Vitamin-Carrot]

cant you add test user account to the root usergroup?

[johnswb]

I have an account called john that I created in the beginning and I still get the same thing.

[aysiu]

Try this:
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/sudo

[johnswb]

Thank you for replying, but I was still unable to logon as root or use sudo. I went ahead and reinstalled and this time I didn't install the mail server. All is good now. Again, thank you for replying to a noob.

[MrSully]

Thanks for posting back here John.... I had the same issue and also did a reinstall without the mail server.

Regards,
Sully

[vinicius.vbf]

What if you try:

# su -

?

[techno-wiz]

I had the same problem due to installing the mail server. Reinstalled without it and everything was fine.

[trayor]

Yep, I had the same problem and also re-installed without mailserver. Works OK.

[thegnuguru]

try booting into recovery mode and then

adduser yourusernamehere admin

I sometimes get the same thing that always works