How to fix sudoers file on virtual machine without root and reboot

sudovirtual-machines

I've broken my sudoers file on a heavy loaded server with a syntax error. And unfortunately I've lost my root password. The server is critical and I'd like to avoid rebooting. So, no sudo, no root, no reboot, no kdesudo or gksu. The server is a virtual machine running on kvm.

How would you fix this?

Best Answer

This is not a general solution, but I'm posting this as an inspiration for people in the same situation.

I didn't have access to solutions mentioned so far but I was very lucky to have access to a cron task that ran as root. I used that cron task to run another script that fixed /etc/sudoers and from now on I will use only visudo.

So if you are in this situation cron tasks can be helpful. No downtime/server restart and no risk to mess up data with dd.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – sudoers to execute commands as another user

You can put the user to run as in parentheses before the command list:

ludo ALL = (django) NOPASSWD: ALL

Cron – Password less sudo in script

If you are running the script as the same user as the one that has no password access then it should work correctly, i would make sure that the script is running as the correct user, I would also test the script by manually calling it as the right user.

You may also need to check that the following line doesn't exist in the sudoers file or that you have a further line which states your user doesn't require a TTY

Defaults requiretty

if that line is present you can either comment it out (not a good idea) its probably better to add the following in

Defaults:<USERNAME> !requiretty

where USERNAME is your user

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – sudoers to execute commands as another user

Cron – Password less sudo in script

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