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sudo permissions problem

Hi,
i recently installed ubuntu 5.10..and unfortunately have some problems... yesterday and without changing anything,i got the following message while trying to execute a sudo command...
sudo: /etc/sudoers is mode 0640, should be 0440
not only can' t i use sudo,i also can' t do anything that requires root previleges...for instance,when i try to launch the package manager it doesn't even prompt me for password...So I can' t use chmod in terminal, and i can' t access "users and groups" in system-->admin... etc
Any ideas?
I' m not exactly a newbie,although i have much to learn...
Once i solve this,I have to get grub to include my windows partition when i reboot my pc...

Thanx in advance...

Googling your error shows the following:

http://www.sudo.ws/pipermail/sudo-wo...October.txt.gz
http://www.sudo.ws/pipermail/sudo-wo...er/000165.html
http://forums.macosxhints.com/archiv...hp/t-3078.html

But specific to you:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=227336

From GRUB menue, boot to the recovery mode and change the permissions from there.

ok solved the sudo problem....
now i have to get a windows entry into the grub list...
my hard disk is divided into 2 partitions,one with ubuntu and the other having windows XP on it
this is how ubuntu sees my hard drive:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hde1 1 62 497983+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hde2 915 9728 70798455 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hde3 63 914 6843690 83 Linux
/dev/hde5 915 9728 70798423+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

so what i added in the menu.lst file was:
title windows XP
root hd(0,4)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1

what i get when i select the windows option in the grub list is :
root hd(0,4)
fliesystem type unknown, partition type Ox7
savedefault

Error12: Invalid device requested
can someone help me on this one?

Possibly you want hd(4,4) ?

I just tried it, and i get this:
root hd(4,4)

Error21: The selected disk does not exist
I don't know what else can i try.....

Puzzle - you sure this drive is hde? If this is your only drive, then it is probably not ide right?
Output of fdisk -l would be nice at this point.

It looks like you have hde1 and hde3 are linux primary partitions (swap and root respectively - for a default ubuntu install)

hde2 is an extended partition containing hde5, which is windows XP.

I think you'd better tell us the details of the install - looks like windows was installed after linux here.

This message:
fliesystem type unknown, partition type Ox7
... seems portentious. Can you mount this fs under linux?

$ sudo mount -t ntfs /dev/hde5 /mnt/winXP

no,i'm certain that i installed windows xp first..i had my hard drive divided before the installation of windows as well.then i installed XP and 5 days ago, i installed ubuntu.
i have already posted the fdisk -l output in my second post.i have also mounted successfully the xp partition and it seems to recognize ntfs...
i don't know if it helps but here's the mount command output:

/dev/hde3 on / type ext3 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
tmpfs on /lib/modules/2.6.12-10-386/volatile type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
/dev/hde5 on /mnt/win type ntfs (ro,noexec,nosuid,nodev,iocharset=utf8,umask=000)
tmpfs on /dev type tmpfs (rw,size=10M,mode=0755)

I'm afraid I'm not making myself clear... when I ask for the output of a command, I expect you to copy the complete output and (preferably) paste it into a code box like this:

Code:

[~]$ /sbin/fdisk -l



Disk /dev/hda: 4321 MB, 4321787904 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 525 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes



  Device Boot      Start        End      Blocks  Id  System

/dev/hda1  *          1          33      265041  83  Linux

/dev/hda2            400        525    1012095  82  Linux swap / Solaris

/dev/hda3              34        399    2939895    b  W95 FAT32



Partition table entries are not in disk order



Disk /dev/hdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes

16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 155061 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes



  Device Boot      Start        End      Blocks  Id  System

/dev/hdb1  *          1      155061    78150712+  83  Linux

Can you see how my output of fdisk -l is different from yours?

I want to see the entire setup to make sure I understand what you have done to distinguish it from what you've said you've done.

In your fdisk output I do not see any bootable partitions for example. I also don't see hda, hdb, hdc, hdd - which would be ide drives (you havn't responded to my earlier comments about this.)

... and from the mount command I gave you, there wouldn't be any such output as you have shown. What you've done is mounted the ntfs fs on /dev/hde5 and then run the mount command, without arguments, to show the list of mounted partitions - but that is not what you said you did. Here's how you could have presented:

Code:

[~]$ sudo mount -t vfat /dev/hda3 /mnt

Password:

[~]$ mount

/dev/hdb1 on / type ext3 (rw)

/dev/proc on /proc type proc (rw)

/dev/sys on /sys type sysfs (rw)

/dev/devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)

/dev/hda1 on /boot type ext3 (rw)

/dev/shm on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)

/dev/hda3 on /usr/vfat type vfat (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,uid=000)

none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)

sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)

automount(pid1964) on /misc type autofs (rw,fd=4,pgrp=1964,minproto=2,maxproto=4)

automount(pid2004) on /net type autofs (rw,fd=4,pgrp=2004,minproto=2,maxproto=4)/dev/hda3 on /mnt type vfat (rw)

... can you see how this makes what I've done clear, compared with your presentation? (Though, in my case, I don't have a ntfs partition to show you.)

I know it seems a trivial point, however I can only go by what you type and sometimes it is handy to know exactly what the machine is saying to you.

This sort of thing makes it quite difficult to help you.

Ha! I see what happened... just from reviewing your posts - and correct me if I'm wrong - you did the following:

1. you have one hard drive stuck in a hardware RAID slot?
2. You partitioned this before installing any OS's - into two bits. A primary partition at the beginning for Windows and an extended on at the end for Ubuntu.
3. You installed MS Windows on the first partition
4. You did a default install of Ubuntu on the second.

But it went wrong...

You see, the windows installation created an additional partition. So Windows lives on hde1 and hde2. I'll bet that hde1 was the bootable part. (Anyone more knowledgeable about windows installations want to contradict me here? Modern Win XP lives in two partitions - one small one at the start is usually dubbed a recovery partition. But I bet this is needed to boot the main windows-root partition.)

Then the Ubuntu Install process overwrote the hde1 partition for swap space. (You must have told it to without meaning to - or, perhaps you thought hde1 didn't have anything important on it, since the C: drive was hde2?) The Ubuntu root partition went in the second of your original partitions as expected.

Unless you find a windows bootable partition in the fdisk -l output, you will not be able to boot windows from anywhere. Not even if you reinstall the windows bootloader (though you could try as an experiment - boot from windows rescue and type fixboot.)

The easiest fix will be to reinstall from the beginning.
Erase the first partition so you have the same setup as before.
Create a second primary partition just before the start of the extended partition. It should be 512Mb or 2xRAMsize, whichever is smaller. This will be your Ubuntu Swap partition. (I think the Ubuntu installer requires the swap partition to be primary - but I'm not sure.)

Check - you will have a large primary partition at the start of the disk, a small primary patrition next, then an extended partition occupying the remaining space.

Install Windows as before - to the first partition.
Install Ubuntu - when you get to the partition manager, you will see 4 partitions:
hde1 = vfat/FAT32 = windows recovery
hde2 = ntfs = windows XP
hde3 = empty
hde4 = extended
hde5 = empty (inside hde4)

You want to format hde3 as linux swap and hde5 as ext3. The mountpoint for hde5 should be root "/" and it should be set bootable. Make sure.

After the install, you'll find the menue.lst file automatically has an entry for windows. If not - then do fdisk -l to check for the windows bootable drive: probably hde1 or hd(0,0) as normal. And Bob's your uncle.

There is probably a fancy windows way of getting the windows part to boot without the recovery partition but I don't know it.

I'm puzzled about your hardware constellation - how come this is not an ide drive?
Cheers
Simon