11.10 - how to set the time?

[flameproof]

Seems my 11.10 went beserk. I rarely used that PC. Desktop looks different too. Suddenly the time shows 2007 or so. And I have trouble to set it correctly.

When I click on the desktop time I see no 'edit function'.

When I do MyID > System Settings > Time and Date - no window pops up

Setting date in Terminal resulted in:

cc@cc-desktop:~$ sudo date 052011092014.55
sudo: must be setuid root

// and then I tried:

cc@cc-desktop:~$ ls -l /usr/bin/sudo
-rwxrwxrwx 2 root root 168768 2011-09-12 03:09 /usr/bin/sudo

cc@cc-desktop:~$ su root
Password: 
su: Authentication failure

// I pretty sure my PW is correct

cc@cc-desktop:~$ mount
/dev/sda6 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro,commit=0)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755)
none on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880)
none on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)

The 'System' Link on the desktop is gone too. What's going on? I am puzzled....

PS: Seems I can't power down or reboot. Just can logout and login. To power down I need to pull the plug.

[slooksterpsv]

Where 11.10 is no longer supported, you'll get limited support on here, besides the typical upgrade to a newer release or if your system won't support the latest Ubuntu, a variant such as Xubuntu or Lubuntu might be best.

Does your system reboot properly? If so, try: sudo su
Then run the date command.

[Impavidus]

Interesting, your sudo has permissions 0777. This means that unprivileged users are allowed to write a new sudo that doesn't check the user's password but runs any command for anyone. Luckily it hasn't got the setuid bit, so it can't run things as root. Also note that su root requires the root password, which by default doesn't exist on Ubuntu, not the user's password.

To get sudo working again, boot into recovery mode, drop to a root shell and execute these commands:

mount -o rw,remount /
chmod 4755 /usr/bin/sudo

Also see this link: http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/fixsudo

However, that is not your only problem. You have a broken GUI, your permissions are messed op (I bet the wrong permissions for /usr/bin/sudo aren't the only ones) and you're running a release that has been end of life for over a year. Maybe you once tried "fixing" something by setting all permissions in /usr/bin to 0777, but this breaks a lot of things, in addition to being a security risk. If you can spare a couple of days to install and configure a new release of Ubuntu or one of its lighter siblings, that would be the best thing to do. I recommend you make backups of your documents and media files, create a live disk of {Lu/Xu/U}buntu 14.04 LTS and install that.

Don't try upgrading to a supported release of Ubuntu. In my experience release upgrades always work (and in other people's experience they never work), but a release upgrade doesn't fix a broken system. Make a clean install instead.

[flameproof]

@Impavidus
Thanks for your detailed reply. I have no idea what happened. It's a rarely used PC here in the office. It does store some data as an intranet file store. Yesterday it was till fine. I didn't touch anything, and I doubt anybody else did.

14.04 looks interesting anyway. So I might a new HDD and get 14.04 onto that, and then add the old HDD for data.

I feel I should get a NAS too as the data on that PC is quite valuable (initially I was in deep shock first).

BTW, to boot I either have to press reset or pull the plug. Holding [SHIFT] does not bring me into recovery mode.