Hi,

I installed ubuntu without ever being asked for a root password (afaik).

I created a user named t with password xxx.

I logged onto the system.

I was able to start a "root terminal" specifying t's password xxx.
I could never start a terminal and do a "su".

I used visudo to add t to the sudo users.

I changed the userid t to ts and the password from xxx to yyy.

- Now I can't start a root terminal - it says "child process failed -1".
- I can't sudo because the user t changed to ts and is no longer in the sudoers file.
- I can't "su root" from a terminal window - password fail with both password xxx and yyy.

I need root rights - and I am the only user of the machine, can anyone see a solution ?

The system is Ubuntu with Gnome.

There is no root account under Ubuntu, so using "su" to become root will fail. By design, you are supposed to issue any commands that need root access by sudo (your user account is already a sudo'er.

Therefore: will work.

If you read my post you will see that the "sudo" command did no longer work because I changed my username.

I solved the problem using the "live" cd with the root terminal, called visudo on the /mnt/hda1/etc/sudoers file with a -f parameter.

thanks anyway

ı think you can become root by writing sudo su. It asks you your account password.

To enable the root account in Ubuntu:

sudo passwd root
enter your user password
enter the new root password at the prompt

The one and only flaw in Ubuntu--fixed in 15 seconds.......

PS
I was not aware that you could CHANGE a user name....You can certainly create new users and delete users---and you can change the privileges of exisiting users

I don't know how you got yourself into that, but I suppose you could just boot into single-user mode (Press Esc before booting to enter the Grub menu and choose 'Recovery Mode') and add yourself to /etc/sudoers. Barring that, you could use any Linux LiveCD to edit it and fix the problem.