sudoers error & ubuntu server recovery mode

Greetings -- I (and all other admin group members) can no longer run sudo on Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS as we receive the following group ID error:

"/etc/sudoers is owned by gid 113, should be 0"

How can we replace the file sudoers with one with correct permissions? A quick search suggests that recovery mode is the only way, though I'd need to convey appropriate instructions to my IT people as I don't have physical access to the (virtual) server and have no idea how it's done in Ubuntu Server.

Many thanks,

Jim

Only possible with physical access, UNLESS you can find someone who is a member of group 113 and do it from their account (they should have SUDO access).

Hi

Quote:

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Originally Posted by doctorproctor

Greetings -- I (and all other admin group members) can no longer run sudo on Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS as we receive the following group ID error:

"/etc/sudoers is owned by gid 113, should be 0"

How can we replace the file sudoers with one with correct permissions? A quick search suggests that recovery mode is the only way, though I'd need to convey appropriate instructions to my IT people as I don't have physical access to the (virtual) server and have no idea how it's done in Ubuntu Server.

Many thanks,

Jim

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Did somebody chown the sudoers files ? Did they change the ownership of any other system files ?

I would be concerned what other system files may have changed.

You may need to boot into a LiveCD/USB to change it back after mounting it .

Code:

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chown 0:0 <mount_point>/etc/sudoers

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Make sure the permissions are 440

Code:

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chmod 440 <mount_point>/etc/sudoers

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As i said before though, have the permissions of any other system file changed ?
You need to find out how this happened.

Out of interest which group is 113 ?

Code:

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grep 113 /etc/group

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Kind regards

Thanks for your replies so far. Group id 113, I believe, is admin: I and one other user are in 113, there are no other users, and neither of us can use sudo at present; apparently, /etc/sudoers requires owner and group to be root and root (0:0) in order for sudo to work (!).

This mistake was made via an errant recursive chgrp applied to /etc/; not sure how critical this is for other files in /etc/ in addition to sudoers (presumably it stopped after sudoers file changed?). We see no other problems to the system, nothing in the error logs, etc. so far.

I studied info on LiveCD booting, but this seems to apply to desktop vs. server Ubuntu: will this work for server? (I believe our IT people are running virtual servers.)

Thanks again,

Jim

Depending on who you chgrp'd them to, it could cause problems down the road.

Anyhow - boot into recovery mode (hold down shift at the grub screen and select recovery mode) and chown it back to root:

Code:

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chown root:root /etc/sudoers

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Thanks again. So, is there an Ubuntu utility to check/fix file permissions (including owner/group)? Alternatively, would these permissions be updated during upgrade to 11.04?

Regards,

Jim

I don't know of any utility to fix the permissions. I'd say so a reinstall so you know the permissions are correct and be more careful in the future.