Disabled Administrator account

[jobsaditmate]

"whoami" answer:

root

"cat /proc/mounts" answer

rootfs/rootfs rw 0 0

[philinux]

"whoami" answer:

root

"cat /proc/mounts" answer

rootfs/rootfs rw 0 0

Thats good so you need to start again in recovery, make root rw, check that it's rw and then

adduser username root

[jobsaditmate]

had another go after checking root and it seems to be in rw

adding '[username]' to group 'root'
adding '[username]' to group 'root'
gpassword: cannot lock /etc/group;try again later
adduser: '/usr/bin/gpassword - a [username] root' returned error code 1. Exiting

[philinux]

had another go after checking root and it seems to be in rw

If root really is rw then it sounds like there's a lock file preventing you from adding your user to root.

I'm not entirely sure which it is. It could be something like /etc/group.lock

In which case it needs deleting. Wait for someone else to chime in.

[jobsaditmate]

the problem started last night when logged in as admin i disabled my own admin account in setting ... user accounts so it is definitely locked - that seems to be the issue.

I am now downloading the 12.10 version with the idea of running it separately and putting this one on ice for a while until a solution becomes available. Will that work do you think?

[philinux]

the problem started last night when logged in as admin i disabled my own admin account in setting ... user accounts so it is definitely locked - that seems to be the issue.

I am now downloading the 12.10 version with the idea of running it separately and putting this one on ice for a while until a solution becomes available. Will that work do you think?

Good plan. Idea.

From the guest user do this and report back,

locate /etc/*.lock

[jobsaditmate]

cannot execute the install of new ubuntu. Bang goes that idea then

[jobsaditmate]

result from your last:

guest-im3vZs@stephen-Satellite-C650D:~$ locate /etc/*.lock
/etc/.pwd.lock
guest-im3vZs@stephen-Satellite-C650D:~$

[steeldriver]

Hi can we take a step back here

How exactly did you "disable" the account? if you did it through the GUI User Accounts -> Password -> Disable then to re-enable from the recovery console the command you would need is

# usermod -U yourusername

This is different from re-adding your user to the sudo (or admin) group, which I think is what we were all assuming you needed to do. FWIW 'usermod -U' works on the /etc/shadow file - removing the '!' ahead of the encrypted password which is placed there when you mark the account disabled - you can 'cat' your /etc/shadow file to see whether the password has a '!' in front of it

The /etc/.pwd.lock file *may* prevent you from doing that but let's see...

[Philinux I don't understand why the OP would want to add the user account to the root group - which in Ubuntu is root's user private group afaik - can you explain the reasoning behind suggesting that?]

[philinux]

Steeldriver,

Thanks for getting back.

If I made a mistake it's due to reading this.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PrecisePango...Infrastructure

Maybe I need more coffee.