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Thomas
Thomas
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I'm getting the following error from sudo:

$ sudo ls sudo: /etc/sudoers is owned by uid 1000, should be 0 sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting sudo: unable to initialize policy plugin

Of course I can't chown it back to root without using sudo. We don't have a password on the root account either.

I honestly don't know how the system got into this mess, but now it's up to me to resolve it.

Normally I would boot into recovery mode, but the system is remote and only accessible over a VPN while booted normally. For the same reason, booting from a live CD or USB stick is also impractical.

The system is Ubuntu 16.04 (beyond EOL, don't ask), but the question and answers are probably more general.

I'm getting the following error from sudo:

$ sudo ls sudo: /etc/sudoers is owned by uid 1000, should be 0 sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting sudo: unable to initialize policy plugin

Of course I can't chown it back to root without using sudo. We don't have a password on the root account either.

I honestly don't know how the system got into this mess, but now it's up to me to resolve it.

Normally I would boot into recovery mode, but the system is remote and only accessible over a VPN while booted normally. For the same reason, booting from a live CD or USB stick is also impractical.

I'm getting the following error from sudo:

$ sudo ls sudo: /etc/sudoers is owned by uid 1000, should be 0 sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting sudo: unable to initialize policy plugin

Of course I can't chown it back to root without using sudo. We don't have a password on the root account either.

I honestly don't know how the system got into this mess, but now it's up to me to resolve it.

Normally I would boot into recovery mode, but the system is remote and only accessible over a VPN while booted normally. For the same reason, booting from a live CD or USB stick is also impractical.

The system is Ubuntu 16.04 (beyond EOL, don't ask), but the question and answers are probably more general.

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Thomas
Thomas
  • 986
  • 1
  • 7
  • 13

How to restore a broken sudoers file without being able to use sudo?

I'm getting the following error from sudo:

$ sudo ls sudo: /etc/sudoers is owned by uid 1000, should be 0 sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting sudo: unable to initialize policy plugin

Of course I can't chown it back to root without using sudo. We don't have a password on the root account either.

I honestly don't know how the system got into this mess, but now it's up to me to resolve it.

Normally I would boot into recovery mode, but the system is remote and only accessible over a VPN while booted normally. For the same reason, booting from a live CD or USB stick is also impractical.