[Linux-disciples] Grumble: changed /etc/sudoers mode, need to fix it, can't reboot

[Dylan Thurston]

If I understand right, you can't do anything as root, and your machine
doesn't have a root password?

How long a wait is it?

On whitehail, we have that fancy virtual computer setup that would let
you do this, of course.  But I don't suppose you have that.

I'm not coming up with any brilliant solutions...

--Dylan

On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 03:50:42PM -0400, Stephen R Laniel wrote:
> I changed the sudoers permissions temporarily to
> > (15:48 -0400) slaniel at akamai_DESKTOP:~$ ls /etc/sudoers
> > -rw-r----- 1 root root 894 2011-06-08 15:13 /etc/sudoers
> 
> So now if I try to change them back, I can't:
> 
> > (15:48 -0400) slaniel at akamai_DESKTOP:~$ sudo chmod 0440 !$
> > sudo chmod 0440 /etc/sudoers
> > sudo: /etc/sudoers is mode 0640, should be 0440
> > sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting
> 
> All the Googling I do tells me to reboot into single-user mode as root, fix the permissions there, and be done with it.
> 
> Which would be fine, except that I'm nowhere near the physical machine right now. Anyone know how to change the permissions back without rebooting?
> 
> Or, if I could reboot with "chmod 0440 /etc/sudoers" in some boot script, that would be fine. But the boot scripts all require you to be root to edit them ... and becoming root is something I can't do.
> 
> Thoughts? Ideas? Will I just have to wait until I get back to the computer?
> 
> -- 
> Stephen R. Laniel
> steve at stevereads.com
> Cell: +(617) 308-5571
> http://stevereads.com/
> PGP key: http://stevereads.com/slaniel.key
> 
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