On Oct 5, 2014, at 6:42 PM, John Hasler wrote: >> This brings up the /etc/passwd of the live system, not the broken >> /etc/passwd on the hard drive. > > Boot up the broken system. Log into your own account. > > sudo vipw > > Fix the root acount entry. I tried that, and it returns: sudo: unknown user: root sudo: unable to initialize policy plugin