I know they say "given root access, everyone will screw up their machine eventually", and I'm discovering how true that is. In an incident of extreme fatfingering, I've managed to wipe out my /etc/passwd file. Now, I have a current backup of it, but I want to make absolutely sure how I should restore it before doing so. Can I just create a file as root, paste the old contents in, and cp the new file over the now corrupt /etc/passwd?
OS is Ubuntu Hardy
EDIT
Erm the problem just took a turn for the much worse. I now cannot use sudo. Can someone PLEASE help me here? I assume I have to mount from a liveCD to edit my /etc/passwd back into place? Now my problem here is that I use a RAID setup. Will an ubuntu live CD autodetect this?
Best Answer
This is totally off the top of my head, but as long as you don't have this line
~~:S:wait:/sbin/suloginin your/etc/inittabfile, you can boot into single user mode without a password and re-set your root passwd.This also assumes that either you don't have a boot loader (grub) password or that if you do have one, you know it ;).
-phez