Accidentally removed my admin account

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1

I was attempting to remove pacnew files, and I think I must have overwritten the wrong one. now when I try to use sudo I get the message

sudo pacdiff -f  :heavy_check_mark:
sudo: you do not exist in the passwd database
If I go to manjaro settings manager, there are no users or admin, and I am not permitted to add any.

I suspect there might be a way to insert this info, but I do not know how.
I am still able able to interact with manjaro despite not having any users. I do have Timeshift, if that is the easiest option.

Thanks

2

You likely removed or overwrote or otherwise garbled your /etc/sudoers file.

You will likely need to use su -l, which will sign you into the actual root account.

Of course ~be careful~.

Theres probably a good dozen or more ways to restore the sudoers file, but one that comes to mind is to simply reinstall the sudo package;

pacman -Syu sudo

(note no ‘sudo’ preface is needed if run from the root account)

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3

Thank you!
Unfortunately I am getting an unexpected error in pacman.

[patience ~]# pacman -Syu sudo
:: Synchronizing package databases…
error: failed to synchronize all databases (unexpected error)

Edit I did update mirrors and that seemed to work fine. (mirrors updated but still getting unexpected error, cant update sudo)

4

Just to check one other possibility, what do you get from

stat /etc/passwd
5

[patience ~]# stat /etc/passwd
File: /etc/passwd
Size: 33 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: 8,18 Inode: 262461 Links: 1
Access: (0644/-rw-r–r–) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root)
Access: 2024-05-14 06:16:14.000000000 -0600
Modify: 2024-04-08 09:26:49.000000000 -0600
Change: 2024-11-16 15:10:45.345911701 -0700
Birth: 2024-05-14 06:16:14.479821135 -0600

6

If I recall correctly:
among the .pacnew files was one that changed/added one or more system users.
/etc/passwd.pacnew

If you simply overwrote your /etc/passwd file with this /etc/passwd.pacnew
then your user account does not exist anymore
and as a consequence you cannot log in anymore.

test:
grep 1000 /etc/passwd
compared with:
grep 1000 /etc/passwd-

You can restore the file from it’s backup copy /etc/passwd- (note the minus sign at the end)
But you need to be root to do this - which means you cannot do it without booting from USB.

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7

You may wish to reset the mirrorlist;

pacman-mirrors -c all

And also clear the cache;

paccache -rvk0

And maybe we do the forced refresh thing

pacman -Syyu sudo

But I also just noticed I somehow skipped the passwd part of this.
It is still unclear which actions caused this problem in the first place, but a broken /etc/passwd is also possible.
You may wish to check it;

cat /etc/passwd

And it should have an entry for your user like this;

persephone:x:1000:1000:persephone:/home/persephone:/bin/bash

A similar (but different, hashed) entry should also exist in your /etc/shadow file … if any or all of these are missing then we need to take some other actions.

8

I think the most recent /etc/passwd.pacnew was the one that changed root’s shell from /bin/bash to /usr/bin/bash. Being now only 33 bytes in size, I think the current passwd file is just that one line.

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9

That sounds like exactly what happened. your command gave me no result.
Where do I find the backup copy-- do you mean from Timeshift or somewhere else?

Also, I am in root on the console, arent I?

10

There where two commands - test that second one as well.

no - only if you log in as the user root or if you use su or sudo
which you likely cannot do anymore

11

Sorry, missed that!

[patience ~]# persephone:x:1000:1000:persephone:/home/persephone:/bin/bash
-bash: persephone:x:1000:1000:persephone:/home/persephone:/bin/bash: No such file or directory

12

Sorry, I thought that’s what su -l did

13

User has already elevated privilege and just needs to restore the backup passwd file, if it exists, I believe.

14

This confirms it - you need to boot from USB - that is probably the easiest way.
Then you can mount your root partition and copy /etc/passwd- to /etc/passwd
and you are done.

@Takakage

Oh, ok - I missed that - so the fix is easy:
cp /etc/passd- /etc/passwd

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15

Where would I find that?

16

Oh, think we crossed posts. I’ll try that now.

17

I’m not allowed to post two times in a row without someone else in between - so it took me a while to edit my post.
the prompt # usually shows that you are root and should be able to do this from this terminal

1 Like
18

I thought there was maybe a typo, but that didnt work either

[patience ~]# cp /etc/passd- /etc/passwd
cp: cannot stat ‘/etc/passd-’: No such file or directory
[patience ~]# cp /etc/passwd- /etc/passwd
[patience ~]# persephone:x:1000:1000:persephone:/home/persephone:/bin/bash
-bash: persephone:x:1000:1000:persephone:/home/persephone:/bin/bash: No such file or directory

19

The relevant command to test the result was

grep 1000 /etc/passwd
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20

Well, I like that one much better, thanks!
[patience ~]# grep 1000 /etc/passwd
alexandra:x:1000:1000:Alexandra:/home/alexandra:/bin/bash

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