I was running visudo and i think i messed a lil up next time i booted it does no longer accept my password and am locked out, i can use ctrl alt 3 and get into user:root
but not my main profile so i can acces root shell, and i don’t know what too do
Without knowing what you changed - there is no way one can provide a meaningful response.
Which file did you edit with visudo?
If I understand correct - you can login with root?
4 Likes
Changing the password is easy. If you can login as root enter
passwd <username>
where <username> is the username of your user.
After changing reboot.
It could be that your user has been deleted from wheel group, in this case please post the sudoers file you changed with visudo.
2 Likes
You can log in as root?
have a look at the command history then - to help you remember what you did with visudo
It’s probably going to be in your users command history:
less /home/username/.bash_history
or
less /home/username/.zhistory
or in roots equivalent files:
less /root/.bash_history
less /root/.zhistory
1 Like
correct
What did you find there?
(If you don’t answer this, Nachlese can’t help you)
cat ~/.*history |grep -E 'visudo'
sudo sh -c 'cat /root/.*history' |grep -E 'visudo'
1 Like
Maybe we should be looking at providing advice to the OP on the assumption that it is their /etc/sudoers file they were working on?
After all, they do mention sudoers in the topic title, and visudo defaults to editing /etc/sudoers if no file is specified, as I just tested on my system:
sudo visudo
[sudo] password for scotty:
visudo: /etc/sudoers.tmp unchanged
Of course, I exited without saving by typing :q! & pressing enter. However, if they mistakenly saved when exiting, they have probably overwritten their sudoers file, and thus find themselves locked out of sudo.
However, as a solution may be time-consuming, it would still be preferable for the OP to confirm what file they were working on.
If there’s a sudoers.pacsave created, that might simplify recovery.
Judging by the OP’s responses response so far, I would guess very time-consuming, indeed.
3 Likes
If that isn’t possible, could they log in to a TTY session as root, delete their messed-up /etc/sudoers file, and then (as root) reinstall sudo to provide the default /etc/sudoers file? Or would that cause other issues?
This is something I was actually pondering recently when I tried to edit my sudoers file for the first time using visudo. It ended up with a lot of "q"s & other letters scattered throughout it as I tried to work out how to exit, and I had to do a search in Firefox for how to exit visudo without saving.
That was when I also discovered the much safer method of dropping a config file into /etc/sudoers.d/ rather than editing the actual sudoers file.
2 Likes
At this point we could guess a number of possibilities. Until the OP actually confirms what they have done; which file(s) they have edited; and/or provides some actionable information to work with, there’s practically nothing to be done here.
If the OP won’t help themselves within a fair amount of time, then I move to close.
3 Likes
If this is the answer to the assumption that you can login in as root - then great!
As visudo can be used for several system sensitive tasks - what exactly did you change?
1 Like
sorry for the long responses atm, am in school i am in school and be home in a hour or four, sorry for the delay.
1 Like
# %wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
The wheel group is outcommented. Looks like the pacnew file being copied over.
1 Like
not how too type that on yhe terminal, i can’t really copy paste
what do you mean?
I would remove the # in front of the mentioned line. Use visudo.
2 Likes
the one with wheel all all all all?
yes, indeed
1 Like
i tried that and it still seems not too work.