Both 'sudoers file in mode 640 instead of 440' and 'su authentication failure'

neomoha · 10-20-2007, 02:50 PM

Hi everyone,
I've got a little problem while managing users' permissions in my computer.
I decided to give sudoer permissions to my user for /media/ directory, So I had to enter as a sudoer:

Code:

sudo su
chmod +w /etc/sudoers

After that I closed the root session and then tried to access /media/mydisk/ -> result: denied.

The issue comes now: when I tried to access /media/mydisk/ in sudo mode, I got the following message:

Code:

sudo: /etc/sudoers is mode 0640, should be 0440

Great !! :-( , the only solution that came to my mind is to enter as su and change the /etc/sudoers file's permissions, but:

Code:

su -

and ...

Code:

Password:
su: Authentication failure
Sorry.

My sudo pass is the same as my user pass, but the su has another, I can't remember entering a different pass for 'su', so maybe I'm in a trouble.

What do u think!!
I will really appreciate any help.
Thanks.

jschiwal · 10-20-2007, 04:27 PM

For the su command, use the root password. /etc/sudoers should have 0440 permissions.

Quote:

sudo su
chmod +w /etc/sudoers

Use sudo like "sudo chmod +w <file>".
For some commands that are in root's path but not a normal users, you need to include the full path, as in "sudo /sbin/modprobe ntfs-3g"