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

[Stephen R Laniel]

I'm at the office now, and I've fixed it. I wondered what would happen if, e.g., I were administering a remote machine on another continent. But in most such cases (whitehail, say, or my employer), there's usually someone on site in the datacenter for exactly this reason.

On Sep 18, 2011, at 8:04 AM, Dylan Thurston wrote:

> 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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-- 
Stephen R. Laniel
steve at stevereads.com
Cell: +(617) 308-5571
http://stevereads.com/
PGP key: http://stevereads.com/slaniel.key