What do I use in place of sudo su to become root?

Question

After I open a terminal, I run sudo su. But it then gives me

>>> /etc/sudoers: syntax error near line 27 <<< sudo: parse error in /etc/sudoers near line 27 sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting sudo: unable to initialize policy plugin

I tried running su and then input the password but the terminal closes after a few seconds. What command do I use to become root? Also, I'm on Ubuntu 18.

Also please explain what you did. Using visudo to edit sudoers has a check for invalid edits to prevent this from happening. — Rinzwind, Jan 03 '21 at 23:35

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 03 '21 at 23:35

2

Boot from a live session, edit /etc/sudoers and fix the mistake.

An example on how to do that from a live session (change sda1 to what you need it to be and if you use another mount point also change below to what you used):

sudo mount -o rw,remount /dev/sda1 /mnt
sudo visudo -f /mnt/etc/sudoers

and then fix line 27.

answered Jan 03 '21 at 23:35

Rinzwind

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Honest question: would a recovery mode root shell suffice for this? – Levente Jan 04 '21 at 03:45
Yes but I consider that more difficult so opted for this method. I also assume we all always have a live session at hand ;-) – Rinzwind Jan 04 '21 at 08:34

What do I use in place of sudo su to become root?

1 Answers1