Okay... My main account, "zack," can do nothing at all. I believe this is because I took away the administration privileges when I first installed Ubuntu. Now, however, I need to install a plugin for Firefox, yet cannot do so. When I click the install thing, a window comes up. It has two choices, and I click on the flash player choice. I click next. Another smaller window comes up. "Would you like to install 'flashplugin-nonfree'?" I click yes. A window pops up asking for me to enter my administration password. I do. Then, yet another window pops up saying "Failed to run gnome-app-install-helper '-e' 'multiverse' as user root. The underlying authorization mechanism (sudo) does not allow you to run this program. Contact the system administrator."

Could someone please assist me?

Hi,

And welcome to LQ!

I'm moving your post over to our Ubuntu-Forum because the chances of
getting an answer there should be higher.


Cheers,
Tink

Okay, thanks. I'm new here, somewhat obviously.

Did you enable the root account or do you have a separate normal user account that you are using as admin?

The first account created by ubuntu, at install time, is by default, the administrator's account, with admin priviledges.
If you have removed admin priviledges from this account, and not enabled a password for root, you are stuck.

I think you'll need to boot to "rescue mode" (which means you boot to a root shell), and then make sure the user zack is a member of the following groups: zack adm dialout cdrom floppy audio dip video plugdev lpadmin scanner admin
Then reboot as normal. (The command to do this is reboot )

If this doesn't solve your problems, we may have to take a look at /etc/sudoers

In future, it is a good idea not to remove admin priviledges from the first user created unless you have already given them to another user, or assigned a password to root

It's all part of (k)ubuntu's (odd, to my mind, [but I am getting used to it] idea of security).

There's a step-by-step tutorial on how to fix sudo if you've taken yourself out of the admin group:
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/sudo

aysiu, thank you very much. I checked these, and I was able to fix it by reading that. I did what it said, then went in and created another account, "peter," and that is my main user account. This seems to be working quite well for me. Thank you all for your wonderful support; I will make sure to come back here if I need any help.