How do I gain admin access without a root password and no sudoers?

Question

I am running VirtualBox on a Windows Machine, and installed Ubuntu Linux 22.04 LTS. During the install, I set up the initial user. However, there appears to be no way to make this user have admin (sudo) privileges. After the install, I can login as the user, but I can't do anything involving admin (meaning, I can't use sudo). If there is a root password, I don't know what it is. (I think by default there is no password for root.)

I tried doing the trick where you run in recovery mode to run as root...but even then it prompts me for a root password, so I can't do anything.

I did the entire install process a second time, thinking I missed something, but to no avail.

Any advice on how to determine what the root password is when you install using VirtualBox? Or how to create a user that ends up in sudoers?

If you install using VirtualBox, there is no root password, you use sudo for everything. It sounds like you have an unofficial Ubuntu build that does something unusual and therefore is not governed by the same rules of Ubuntu 22.04. Where did you get the Ubuntu 22.04 installer/ISO? — Thomas Ward, Feb 06 '23 at 19:45
I had the same issue and I downloaded the latest ISO from the ubuntu website. This is definitely an issue with the combination of ubuntu / VirtualBox and only seems to happen with the unattended installation option — Richard C, May 12 '23 at 11:40
This may be a duplicate of https://askubuntu.com/questions/1440032/virtualbox-ubuntu-22-04-how-to-add-sudo-rights . — David Cary, May 24 '23 at 02:51
related: How can I make my own account a sudoers on VirtualBox? — David Cary, May 24 '23 at 02:52

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 06 '23 at 19:00

So, I found a colleague who suggested I try to login using "su root" and then enter the password for the first user created (which was NOT root). Sure enough, it worked!

This appears to be a bug? The default root user shouldn't have been created with a password, and the first user I created (which wasn't named "root") should have been given the option to be given admin access.

I'm not sure if this is an Ubuntu install issue, or a VirtualBox 7 issue.

It looks like you install some unofficial Ubuntu build. – Pilot6 Feb 06 '23 at 19:29 — Pilot6, Feb 06 '23 at 19:29

How do I gain admin access without a root password and no sudoers?

1 Answers1