Brother MFC-7860DW Drivers - Sudo issue?

[Sunrise611]

I am trying to install the printer drivers for the Brother MFC-7860DW wireless printer as per the instructions on Brother's site that was confirmed by Jaimie on this forum at: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1854483&page=2 who has the same specs as me (Ubuntu 11.10 64 bit and the same printer) and successfully installed them.

I am starting a new thread so that this will hopefully not get lost in the shuffle or get buried deep in the other thread.

Anyway, when I entered the following command in the Terminal to install the first driver, I received an error about the sudo password. (The command was altered slightly to remove personal information.)

me@d-Vostro-2520:~$ sudo dpkg -i --force-all mfc7860dwlpr-2.1.0-1.i386.deb
[sudo] password for (regular user):
(regular user) is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
me@d-Vostro-2520:~$ sudo dpkg -i --force-all mfc7860dwlpr-2.1.0-1.i386.deb
[sudo] password for (super user):
Sorry, try again.

I tried entering both my super (admin) and regular password but neither was accepted. Both User accounts still appear in my User directory so they exist.

How do I get past this? I am a newbie and not used to entering commands in the Terminal.

[Isamu715]

Is this (regular user) the only user except root? If it was not the first user created on the system it's possible that (regular user) is not in sudoers file. Swtch to an administrator type user and in "User accounts" settings change the (regular user) account type from "Regular" to "Administrator".

To use the sudo command a user needs to be in the sudo group, you can check a user's group membership by running:

groups (regular user)

If (regular user) is the only no-root user on the system boot into recovery mode(an option in GRUB) so you can get into a root terminal. From the root terminal execute the following command:

gpasswd -a (regular user) sudo

This should add (regular user) to the sudo group.

[Sunrise611]

Is this (regular user) the only user except root? If it was not the first user created on the system it's possible that (regular user) is not in sudoers file. Swtch to an administrator type user and in "User accounts" settings change the (regular user) account type from "Regular" to "Administrator".

To use the sudo command a user needs to be in the sudo group, you can check a user's group membership by running:

groups (regular user)

If (regular user) is the only no-root user on the system boot into recovery mode(an option in GRUB) so you can get into a root terminal. From the root terminal execute the following command:

gpasswd -a (regular user) sudo

This should add (regular user) to the sudo group.

Thanks for your reply. I created two accounts.

One is an admin account that I do not use. The second is a regular account that I do use. When I installed the pinter drivers from Brother, i entered my admin password.

So, I do not know why the terminal is not recognizing the admin account.

[pdc]

you are running a very similar thread.........on installing a Brother ? I have just replied to it ..........................

[Sunrise611]

Is this (regular user) the only user except root? If it was not the first user created on the system it's possible that (regular user) is not in sudoers file. Swtch to an administrator type user and in "User accounts" settings change the (regular user) account type from "Regular" to "Administrator".

To use the sudo command a user needs to be in the sudo group, you can check a user's group membership by running:

groups (regular user)

If (regular user) is the only no-root user on the system boot into recovery mode(an option in GRUB) so you can get into a root terminal. From the root terminal execute the following command:

gpasswd -a (regular user) sudo

This should add (regular user) to the sudo group.

Thanks for your reply. I created two accounts.

One is an admin account that I do not use. The second is a regular account that I do use. When I installed the pinter drivers from Brother, i entered my admin password.

So, I do not know why the terminal is not recognizing the admin account.

[Isamu715]

So you only have two accounts - root and (regular user). Post the output of:

groups (regular user)

Also try loging into the root account directly with:

su

and entering your admin password.

[Sunrise611]

I am still stuck on this issue.

As soon as I got the computer, I created two accounts. One is an admin account that I do not use and the other is a regular account with lesser privileges that I do use. I am the only one using the computer so there is just one regular user.

I am trying to install the printer drivers from within my regular user account.

When I type sudo and the command to install the printer driver, the computer responds by asking for rmy regular account's password instead of the admin password.

When I enter the regular user password, it fails and says "try again" and when I enter the admin password, it says it's not recognized (or something) and "will be reported".

I was able to log into the admin account with my admin password from the start menu (graphical menu). (I did not try entering su in the Terminal from within my regular account.)

So, that is my sudo account, right? I should be able to use that password in my regular account to grant privileges.

Should I be attempting to install the printer driver directly from the admin account instead of the user account? That would not be desirable since the printer is wireless and would have to be online and leave my admin account vulnerable.

Isamu ... when you say to type: groups (regular user) does that mean to type that exactly as is or do I type groups (regular user name)?

This is harder than it should be.

[Isamu715]

When I enter the regular user password, it fails and says "try again" and when I enter the admin password, it says it's not recognized (or something) and "will be reported".

This means your (regular user) is probably not in the sudo group. Check with the groups command to make sure.

Isamu ... when you say to type: groups (regular user) does that mean to type that exactly as is or do I type groups (regular user name)?

I mean the user name, so that if your username is john, you would type:

groups john

Post the ouput of this command.

[Sunrise611]

Thanks for your quick response and assistance. Here is the output.

me2@me-Vostro-2520:~$ groups Me2
groups: Me2: No such user
me2@me-Vostro-2520:~$ groups me2
me2 : me2
me2@me-Vostro-2520:~$

me2 = regular account
me = admin account

I tried entering my regular account in uppercase and it didn't work so then I tried it with the lowercase and it just repeated what I wrote (me2). Nothing else.

Is that okay?

[Isamu715]

It appears your user accounts are misconfigured. This is how it looks on my system:

[ isamu: ~ ]$ groups isamu
isamu : isamu adm cdrom sudo dip plugdev lpadmin sambashare

Notice how the user is in the sudo group, this is necessary to use sudo. To add your user to a group use gpasswd. In your case it should be:

gpasswd -a me2 sudo

The above command needs to be run as root. Root is the actual admin account, the user that can do anything, it's present on every system. To log in as root use:

su

and enter your admin password.

It seems strange that your user is only in it's own group. When creating new user Ubuntu automatically assigns user to groups to allow some basic tasks. See my groups output at the top, I'm in several groups and I didn't add any of them manually, this is the default.