As mentioned in this question, the sudo command in my live USB is not working. To fix this I need to run some commands. But every command I run says permission denied. How do I gain root access? Running su - asks for password.
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As only the sudo command is not working because of a badly configured /etc/sudoers file, you can use pkexec as temporary replacement:
pkexec su -
pkexec will prompt a GUI password dialog every time you run it, it seems not to work in a TTY or when booting to text mode as it needs a dbus component.
You definitely need to fix your /etc/sudoers file, becoming lazy and just using pkexec from now on is not the way to go. That's not what it's made for.
Byte Commander
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In that case what would be the password? I was booting from a live USB. – Yashbhatt Feb 24 '16 at 12:21
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This is the login password. But when I ran
su -, it asked for password and keeping it blank gives me "Authentication failure". – Yashbhatt Feb 26 '16 at 05:06 -
You may not run
su -, that will ask you for the root account's password (which is deactivated). You must runsudo su -or in your case wheresudois brokenpkexec su -to become root with your own account password. – Byte Commander Feb 26 '16 at 10:17 -
Can't try it now. The pen drive is formatted. Thanks for the help though. – Yashbhatt Feb 26 '16 at 17:42
sudocommand and here I want root access. – Yashbhatt Feb 28 '16 at 14:31sudogives you root access. If you getsudoto work, then you get root access. If you want to run a shell as super-user usesudo -sorsudo -idepending on your needs. – David Foerster Feb 28 '16 at 14:41