how to give a user sudo privilege from command line?

[georgelappies]

Good day all, I have a bit of a problem. I adjusted some settings in the desktop settings folder in KDE. I had only one user account on the machine. Next time I rebooted I could not log into KDE (it kept bombing out). I had to log into the console. Finally I managed to create a new account with useradd but this user cannot sudo…

*

My problem is that my home directory is encrypted, so I need a new user with sudo privileges to delete all the kde files and folders in my original users home directory so that I can start with a new KDE setup (which won’t be a bad thing since I tinkered a lot).

*

How can I add sudo privileges to the new account (I presume I can do it by logging in with my sudo account in a terminal login?

*

Please kind ubuntu population assist me with getting my music, videos and docs back

[prshah]

How can I add sudo privileges to the new account (I presume I can do it by logging in with my sudo account in a terminal login?

I cannot understand how giving a new username sudo privileges will help you, but you can do this by adding the newuser to the admin group

sudo adduser newusername admin

If you do not have access to sudo at all, please reboot into the recovery console's root terminal.

[georgelappies]

Thanks, won't a sudo user have access to my old home directory even if I need to supply a password to open it. I wanted to delete all files and folders in my old home directory exept /music /data /videos /opt /Documents thus forcing Kde to create new config files ans folders and allowing me to log in and not crash when trying to login with saved incompatible settings?

Perhaps any other suggestions? I guess I can delete these via commandline but it will be much quicker via graphical interface (I am a noob wrt command line still )

[highspider]

see also

man sudoers

-and as root-

gedit /etc/sudoers

search the web for /etc/sudoers to have more human reading info like
http://www.ghacks.net/2010/01/06/how...to-etcsudoers/
this gui is not ubuntu! but get u searching in right direction
but thats problem more then any ever uses

[prshah]

gedit /etc/sudoers

DON'T do this! It's an almost surefire way to break your sudo. This approach is not recommended:

a) It doesn't do anything to clear your problem
b) editing /etc/sudoers without using the "visudo" command is highly NOT recommended
c) gedit does not come with KDE (KDE's default editor is KATE)
d) to use a custom editor to edit the sudoers file, use

EDITOR=/usr/bin/gedit visudo

All in all, the above advice is useless at best and dangerous otherwise.

To get back to your problem, what is actually happening with the desktop is "bombing out"?

[georgelappies]

The system startsup to the point where you have to supply login credentials to get into KDE. I enter my username and password. It starts to load the desktop but then goes back to the login screen.

Just before it started doing this I playes around with the 3D desktop settings in the system manager. If I recall correctly there was a tick box to disable opengl compatibility checks. I selected that and since then I could not log back into that account via KDE. The new user I made loads KDE perfectly but he cannot see the home dir of the old user...

[prshah]

startsup to the point where you have to supply login credentials

the 3D desktop settings in the system manager.

At the login screen, you will find two buttons at the bottom left of the login window (changes depending on your theme). One will be a "power off" style red button, and one will be a blue "down arrow" graphic button. Click the blue button, and choose "Failsafe". Now you should be able to log in as your original user.

Navigate to the 3D settings (System settings-desktop-advanced) and change it back to the original. Then log out and log back in normally, and everything should be fine.

Please post back with results / errors.

[georgelappies]

At the login screen, you will find two buttons at the bottom left of the login window (changes depending on your theme). One will be a "power off" style red button, and one will be a blue "down arrow" graphic button. Click the blue button, and choose "Failsafe". Now you should be able to log in as your original user.

Hi, thanks for your assistance. When I choose failsafe the exact same happens for that user, the new user can login with failsafe without a problem. Weird...

[prshah]

When I choose failsafe the exact same happens

OK, here's something else you can try:

At the login screen, switch to a virtual terminal with Ctrl+Alt+F1. Log in as the original user, unlock your home directory when prompted.

Now give these commands

locate kwinrc
mv ~/.kde/kwinrc ~/kwinrc_backup
mv .compiz dot_compiz

This will remove Kwin and Compiz settings. The first command will give you the location of kwinrc. Please replace this in the second command, instead of the part in red. Depending on whether you used KWin or Compiz, one or the other command may give you an error, which you can ignore (for now).

Now, restart KDE

sudo service kdm restart

and attempt to log in again (Press Ctrl+Alt+F7..F10 if the login window does not appear).

Please post back with results / errors.

[georgelappies]

Thanks!!! Problem is solved