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I can not authenticate anything that requires GUI authentication...like approve software updates. After each try it says something like authentication was unsuccessful, and closes the dialog after 3 tries.

I am on Xubuntu 14.04 I am able to do sudo commands and authentications via the terminal, but nothing via the GUI.

I have tried changing the password via passwd and not using any special characters etc. But this seems above my head as I am fairly new to Xubuntu/Ubuntu. I am unable to update my system so if someone can remind me also of how to do it via terminal, but my main thing is to fix GUI authentication.

Any help appreciated.

Stuff I have tried:

This is not a match to any other question, as alluded, as this is: 1. a different version 2. Their solution of holding SHIFT did not work for me. 3. My issue started with GUI authentication issues first then sudo just disappeared later.

My user is a member of groups sudo and adm Sudo commands work fine Most gksudo commands like gksudo software-center fail to authenticate except gksudo xclock which works :-)

UPDATE To my surprise now when I sudo it says I am not in sudo. when I run GROUPS im not in sudo or adm anymore? Not sure why?

I tried to do the recovery thing...but when I reboot hitting or holding the shift does nothing. I have an SSD so my system boots in like 6 seconds. I have tried the shift key many times after when I see the blue Xubuntu screen, and before but nothing.

So now I need help accessing a root prompt on system so I can add myself to sudo..Ubuntu is a challenge is't it? :-)

Norman Bird
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  • I am not sure I understood you right: Did you successfully change your password to e.g. 123456 or just tried and failed? And if you chose another "easy" password, I would recommend you to just use numbers for this test. As numbers are the only characters you can be pretty sure that won't change their position in any other keyboard layout. – Byte Commander Jun 18 '15 at 18:29
  • i successfully changed the password. but it seemed I locked myself out of sudo somehow and now I can not do sudo!. Will update my question, yikes. – Norman Bird Jun 18 '15 at 18:52
  • possible duplicate of How do I add myself back as a sudo user? – karel Jun 20 '15 at 04:09
  • I have explained why I feel this is not a match. My solution was posted. 2 same questions can not, by definition, have 2 different answers. My solution should stand as it may help others who like myself need a different solution than the answer provided in the other question. – Norman Bird Jun 20 '15 at 10:59

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It seems as though I had somehow lost sudo on my account, but it degraded over time. It just was not there anymore. So I figured out how to do recovery mode in Ubuntu 14.04. 95% of what is out there says click or hold the shift key to access the grub menu, but this is not the case with me. It took me a whiiiile to discover that hitting the ESC" button, once, after BIOS is what does it for me. This appears to be a bug or a very bad idea in UBUNTU to allow different ways to access a certain functionality.

I was able to access grub, run recovery linux-image, then drop to root. I then ran mount -o rw,remount, then adduser myusername sudo.

Once I rebooted, GUI authentication worked fine again.

Again, I have no idea how I lost sudo....seems to me if the system will allow actions that would remove sudo from the last account with admin access, there would be some SEVERE warnings and multiple notifications. But there was not. I had no idea.

Norman Bird
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