sudo: must be setuid root

mswamy78 · 07-13-2011, 12:35 AM

Hi All,

Suddenly my sudo stopped working. I am trying to mount usb to one of the directory
#sudo mount /dev/sdb /mnt/test
It throws me the error sudo: must be setuid root

This was working just a day back.
Please suggest

Thanks
Swamy

Tinkster · 07-13-2011, 12:37 AM

Hi, welcome to LQ!

And is is setuid root?

Code:

ls -l $(which sudo)

What distro are you running? Did you run any updates lately?

Cheers,
Tink

mswamy78 · 07-13-2011, 02:51 AM

-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 119240 2009-06-22 13:03 /usr/bin/sudo

No I have not installed any components.

nooneknowme · 07-13-2011, 02:57 AM

My sudo on SLES has suid bit set, maybe give it a try.

Quote:

node01:~ # ls -l /usr/bin/sudo
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 152716 Mar 1 2010 /usr/bin/sudo
node01:~ #

mswamy78 · 07-13-2011, 03:31 AM

Please let me know how to set the bit. Also for me chown/chmod is also not working..
buntu@ubuntu-desktop:~$ sudo chmod 4755 /usr/bin/sudo
sudo: must be setuid root

nooneknowme · 07-13-2011, 03:47 AM

I think you will need to get to the recovery mode in ubuntu and correct the permissions.

mswamy78 · 07-13-2011, 05:50 AM

I am using the evaluation board which has this ubuntu linux running on it. There is no recovery mode.Is there any alternative?

Tinkster · 07-13-2011, 11:58 AM

Do you have a password set for root?

If you didn't do any updates/upgrades ... did you play with
chmod on the /usr directory?
If you didn't (I can't help but notice that your sudo is
ancient) I'd like to move this to Security as perms
changing spontaneously doesn't ring normal or healthy.

Cheers,
Tink

mswamy78 · 07-14-2011, 12:45 PM

unfortunately I dont have root passwod. I may have done(not sure) chmod to /usr directory.
Is this not allowed? please suggest
Thanks

Tinkster · 07-14-2011, 02:31 PM

"Allowed"? As root (or user w/ sudo privileges) you can do
anything. Should you? Absolutely not. Unless you want to end
up in a situation like yours - it's certainly a great learning
experience.

To set things straight you can either boot or a rescue-cd and
fix the perms on sudo from there, or you could try booting into
single-user mode (not that I know how *buntu derivatives behave
when doing that in terms of root access).

Cheers,
Tink

nooneknowme · 07-15-2011, 01:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tinkster

To set things straight you can either boot or a rescue-cd and
fix the perms on sudo from there, or you could try booting into
single-user mode (not that I know how *buntu derivatives behave
when doing that in terms of root access).

I highly doubt that he going into rescue mode and fixing the permissions will solve the issue. mswamy78 mentioned that he may have used chmod, and I suspect that it was with -R, that's the only way he could have changed the permission on sudo binary. There will be other binary's as well which are not showing issues as of now but may at a later stage come up with an issue.

The best I can suggest is to reinstall. To save himself from all the troubles

.

van_Zeller · 11-07-2012, 01:22 PM

Hi,

I also have this problem. I was the cause of it. During some computer problems, booted the laptop from a live CD. Since I was having some problems accessing the hard drive on the PC and was in a hurry, I did chmod -R 777 * big mistake, I now see.

Can anybody help me correct this, please?

thanks!

TobiSGD · 11-07-2012, 01:56 PM

Since you have chmod'ed the whole system, as it seems (in which directory have you done that?) it may also be possible that a clean re-install is the easiest and fastest solution for you.

chrism01 · 11-07-2012, 05:59 PM

For anyone with an rpm based system, you can fix perms etc properly with http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/reset-...ermission.html

shivaa · 11-07-2012, 09:31 PM

Once check whether you've sudo access or not,

Code:

example% su root
example% sudo -l -U <your-username>

It will list all commands that you can run as sudo.
If you have enough privileges, then do SUID on /usr/bin/sudo, as:

Code:

example% chmod u+s /usr/bin/sudo

It should work then! Good luck!