Problem using “sudo su” command

Question

I can't login as root, this is what happens:

gladiss@gladiss-Lenovo-G580:~$ sudo su
sudo: /usr/lib/sudo/sudoers.so must be only be writable by owner
sudo: fatal error, unable to load plugins

I've tried all commands suggested in similar threads. Nothing helped. Maybe cause this:

enter image description here

Can you please output the result of ll /usr/lib/sudo/? Also about what file is that image? — xZise, Feb 18 '14 at 22:05
possible duplicate of 'sudo' not working after changing the permissions of '/usr' directory — Mitch, Feb 19 '14 at 04:10
is that account an admin account or is it a guest like account? — Zuko, Feb 19 '14 at 07:41
whenever you do get back on as root, do a sudo passwd as root and change it's password to something you know. That way you can just do a su to login as root. — Jacob Minshall, Feb 19 '14 at 19:21
@janos and why bump this years-old question just for that? (I'm asking because you have been making minor edits to a lot of old questions lately) — muru, Jan 09 '17 at 08:20

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 19 '14 at 07:36

1

You can also use "sudo -i" to login as root.

answered Feb 19 '14 at 07:36

mango

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 19 '14 at 19:10

sudo: /usr/lib/sudo/sudoers.so must be only be writable by owner

It seems the file /usr/lib/sudo/sudoers.so has the wrong permissions. It should be writable only by the owner, but apparently that's not the case. Confirm the permission bits shown by:

ls -l /usr/lib/sudo/sudoers.so

The integrity of the sudoers.so library is critical for the security of the system, that's why all sudo commands are automatically rejected, as a safety feature.

To fix the permissions you would have to become root, one way or another. Do you have a root password? Probably not. Start the system in rescue mode, and boot a live CD and mount your disk, fix the permissions and reboot.

Perhaps even more important is to find out how this happened. Have you been hacked?

Problem using “sudo su” command

2 Answers2