Re: Debian 10 64bit
[re-sending to list as I initially replied from a non-subscribed address]
Hi Greg,
Thanks. Apologies if I'm missing something, but I don't understand how this situation could have arisen other than because of password errors somewhere or other.
Jerry said:
> When I booted the system
> and try to do "apt-get update and apt-get upgrade" using "sudo" it would
> not let me do that. Said I was not a sudo user. I then tried "su root"
> which failed as well as it said I was not a sudo user.
Surely su doesn't require sudo?
> I went to the
> sudouse file and changed it to make me a user. Sudo as myself worked
> fine but su root still did not work.
Jerry seems to me to be saying that neither sudo nor su root succeeded, yet he still saved changes (I presume) to what I imagine is /etc/sudoers - doesn't he?
The second installation resulted in success with su root
> After seeing the email concering problems with sudo and su root ...
Could someone refer me to this please?
> ... I decided to reload. I did but did a use whole disk (no home part).
> After booting I did have to go to the sudouser file an change it again
> ***but the su root worked with out a problem***.
I'm not sure if a leaving the root pw blank during installation disables use of su root, but in the case of a blank root password, sudo should have worked but it didn't. If sudo didn't work because there is no-one in the sudo group, su should be available, and for both not to work (as in the first installation) suggests a password error, doesn't it? The fact that sudo was made to work during the first installation (having not initially) suggests that su must have succeeded at some point, doesn't it?
Kind regards,
Gareth
On Tue, 15 Dec 2020, at 18:12, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 06:02:48PM +0000, Gareth Evans wrote:
> > It seems to me that Jerry may have mistakenly typed a user rather than root password at the su (not sudo) prompt at least once, but also used the correct (root) password at least once.
> >
> > How else could changes to /etc/sudoers (which I imagine is what is meant by "the sudouse(r) file") have been saved?
>
> In Debian, there's no need to modify the sudoers file if you only want
> "all or nothing" access to sudo. Users in the sudo group have full
> access and can use sudo to do anything. Users not in the group have
> no access.
>
> If you leave the root password empty during installation, your initial
> user account is added to the sudo group, and the sudo package is added
> to the list of packages to be installed.
>
> If you install a desktop environment, the sudo package is also added
> to the list of packages to be installed. Of course, in order to *use*
> it, you'll need to add users to the sudo group, or modify the sudoers
> file.
>
>
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