6

I was messing with ubuntu trying to make autogen.sh work and did a dumb thing. I typed:

sudo chown -R emilia /usr/bin/

and after that I cannot use sudo anymore.

I tried so far:

logging as root and typing: 

chown root:root /usr/bin/sudo && chmod 4755 /usr/bin/sudo

Didn't help.

I ran some tests and here are the results:

emilia@emilia:~$ ls -la /usr/bin | grep -v "root *root"
total 147656
drwxr-xr-x  2 emilia root      65536 Aug 14 16:06 .
-rwxr-xr-x  1 emilia root      51920 Feb 18 14:37 [
lrwxrwxrwx  1 emilia root          8 Aug  7 16:04 2to3 -> 2to3-2.7
-rwxr-xr-x  1 emilia root         96 Jul  2 21:02 2to3-2.7

emilia@tenshi:~$ ls -la /usr/bin | grep -v "rwxr-xr-x\|^l"
total 147656
-rwxrwxr-x  1 emilia emilia       22 Aug 14 16:06 autogen.sh

emilia@emilia:~$ ls -l /usr/bin/sudo
-rwxr-xr-x 1 emilia root 136808 Maj  4 19:25 /usr/bin/sudo
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  • 2
    Are you sure you ran the commands you say as root? Were there any errors? What happened? The chown root:root /usr/bin/sudo && chmod 4755 /usr/bin/sudo should have at least fixed the permissions and ownership of the sudo binary. – terdon♦ Aug 14 '16 at 14:45
  • @terdon yes I was sure, I entered root by restarting, entering advanced ubuntu settings, root and then I entered those commands. No errors were shown. – Mirakurun Aug 14 '16 at 15:21
  • could you please do the same thing again and show us the output of your ls commands run as root? – terdon♦ Aug 14 '16 at 15:24
  • @terdon postimg.org/image/5gw0yc4d5 – Mirakurun Aug 14 '16 at 15:37
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    there we go, that's what I thought. You see the error messages about read only file system? You need to remount it read write. Run mount -o rw,remount / before attempting to fix the permissions. – terdon♦ Aug 14 '16 at 15:42
14

Since you cannot use sudo anymore, there are two things you can do:

  1. If you have placed a root password (not your user password), use su on a terminal and you will be able to use the root account by using that password.

  2. If you haven't placed a root password, you can reboot your system and go to Recovery mode, and open a root session. Since you haven't placed a root password you won't be asked to enter one. After that, type: mount -o rw,remount / and press Enter to enable read/write access to your system.

Having gained root access by either of the methods above, issue chown -R root:root /usr/bin and you should be back to business.

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  • I am going to try it now. – Mirakurun Aug 14 '16 at 15:49
  • That did the trick. – Mirakurun Aug 14 '16 at 15:57
  • Very nice. You will probably have to restore some permissions now since you changed them but having root access now, that won't be an issue. ;-) – Stormlord Aug 14 '16 at 16:02
10

Your commands are not working because recovery mode mounts the file system as read-only. To make it writable, run this command:

mount -o rw,remount /

Now, execute:

chmod 4755 /usr/bin/sudo
chown -R root:root /usr/bin

to fix the permissions.

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