Hi everyone

I setup a user and then added the user to the wheel then I logout of root and in to the new user and tried to su it said,

setgid: operation not permitted.

I then tried sudo and it said,

sudo: must be setuid.

Does anyone know why this is happening I am using backtrack.

gishaust.

Please write the exact commands and their output.

Also write the output of the command "groups" and "sudo whoami"

Are you doing this on a Slackware box?

Eric

Can you also post the output of these 2 commands?
Does your /etc/sudoers file have the wheel group use enabled?

Thankyou for your responses to answer all your questions
My os is backtrack with a slackware base and kde gui or flax.

The following commands and responses

these are being done from the root account as I have no other user on the machine except for the other I have just created

groups gishaust
users root

sudo whoami
root

etc/sudoers
# %wheel all=(all) setenv:all

ls-l 'which sudo'
/bi/ls: cannot access which sudo: No such file or directory

ls-l 'which su'
/bi/ls: cannot access which sudo: No such file or directory


The following comes from gishaust account

su
Password: *******
setgidperation not permitted

sudo
sudo: Must be setuid root

The 2 ls commands use backticks ` (on my keyboard, to the left of the 1 key, with the tilde ~), not a single quote ' (on my keyboard on the same key as ").

Also, in your /etc/sudoers file, giving permissions to the wheel group is disabled because that line is commented out. You can edit the file with visudo and remove the comment symbol.

You don't need to be in root's group as a user if you have sudo and su access. You can just be in users, or better still, create a private group and make that your primary group.

here are the responses you asked for

bt ~ # ls -l `which sudo`
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 97948 Jul 24 2007 /usr/local/bin/sudo*
bt ~ # ls -l `which su`
-rwx--x--x 1 root root 35868 Dec 7 16:28 /bin/su*

I have remove the # in sudoers and logout of root and back into gishaust at the terminal and the sudo and still got the same response.

What you are saying at the bottom of the post I create a group name etc 'accounts' then add the user to it 'accountmanager' after that all you have to do is su or sudo and as long as you have the root password it will allow me to have root privileges. Is that correct. Thanks.

Both of those executables are suid on my systems. As root, you can run the following to change it which should allow you to use sudo as a member of the wheel group (now that the line in /etc/sudoers is uncommented):
Yes, for using su it doesn't matter which groups you're in as long as you know the root account's password. It would be better to create another group for your user account than to leave it in the root group.

su works find sudo gives me the password but as soon as I enter the root password it asks for it again three times and then says gishaust is not of the sudo group.

I want to know if I have the following correct before i do it.

groupadd accounts

adduser

login: name accountmanager
Id uid: "automatic choosen by the computer"
initial group: accounts
additional groups: "press enter"
home directory : "press enter"
shell: "press enter"
Expiry date: "press enter" #this is if I want the account end at some stage

I am fairly new to groups and accounts. so would this achieve what we have be discussing.

There's a couple of things there...

Firstly, I'm assuming you've added the gishaust user to the wheel group and uncommented that line from /etc/sudoers using visudo. If so, when you use sudo you need to type in gishaust's password, not the root password. You use the root password when you use su.

The last part will create a group called accounts and a user called accountmanager who is a member of that group. To access sudo, the accountmanager will need to be added to the wheel group and will use their own password with sudo.

Thanks for all your help i have not add gishaust to the wheelgroup.
I have been read up and found this information and your support helped me greatly with the learning curve. But what is the wheel group.

only joking ta

Remember - this is a Slackware forum. Backtrack is not Slackware. The parts of Slackware that Backtrack changes/removes/mutilates are not endorsed by Slackware, Inc. and you should not ask support here. Your problem is one of Backtrack exclusively - in Slackware this would work.

Eric