<USER> is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.

[yetiman64]

I was suggesting it in order to rescue the sudoers file, which he can't get to with a normal sudo.

To set the root password requires the use of sudo, which in this case has been broken. The best bet for the OP is to look into the link in WorMzy's post or post back the output for bodhi.zazen.

Use of the root account is not supported here (Canonical have it locked as default). Posting instructions for unlocking it is against forum policy (lucky you didn't do that ). Hence the response to your post suggesting the use of the root account and su (which normally won't work in Ubuntu for root). Hope this helps explain the reaction/response earlier.

[CharlesA]

You can drop to recovery mode to get to a root prompt - that will allow you to fix the sudoers file.

[3rdalbum]

You can drop to recovery mode to get to a root prompt - that will allow you to fix the sudoers file.

To explain: On a dual-boot system, the GRUB menu appears on startup. On a single-boot system, you hold down the Shift key while starting up and it brings up the GRUB menu.

You'll see a list of installed kernels. Basically, you choose the second one in the list - it'll have "Recovery Mode" in its name. Then you can just run:

visudo

and change back whatever you changed.

You've learnt the hard way: It's not a good idea to mess with the security system. You're just setting up your system at the moment which is why you get a fair few authentication dialogs and why they seem annoying at first. Once you've set up your system, you'll rarely get them anyway.

Making the modification you described doesn't remove all authentication dialogs anyway. It just stops the 'gksudo' ones from appearing. Any related to Policykit, such as Software Center or Gnome authentication dialogs, will continue to appear. Can't be stopped either as far as I know; you really don't want to because things will probably break, or you'll loosen your computer's security to the point where a script kiddie will 0wn your computer. If you're going to make your computer insecure, you might as well do it the quick way and install Windows XP.

[Azuruez]

Thanks for all of the help guys, problem solved

[sbergman27]

Hey, I switched my desktop from Ubuntu back to CentOS 6. But it'll be a while before I break the sudo habit. Network Manager complains if I add myself to sudo, refusing to connect to the network for "security reasons". So that was not a simple option.

I got so annoyed at that whiny "I'm gonna report you!" message, that I went in with a binary editor and changed it to a less annoying "The incident will be concealed." (Yes, it's really hard-coded into the sudo binary.)

Re-establishing the "su" habit is now much less irritating.

-Steve