User and Root password apparently different.(SOLVED..ish)

[NexusHumanis]

I just installed Julia on my laptop, and everything seemed fine. Then I tried opening the Backup tool to restore my software collection, but it refused to acknowledge my password. In fact, none of the applications that need root access work. Login, however, works fine with the password I set during installation.
What could be wrong here, and is there a way to fix it_

EDIT. I have looked into my permissions and groups, and it appears my user has somehow been left out of the sudoers group. That does pose a problem, as I am the only user there is... I tried restarting in recovery mode, but Grub menu never appears, jumping straight to splash...

[dawgdoc]

Press the AnyKey before it gets to the splash screen, that should make the grub menu visible. It would in Isadora, this skipping Grub occurs on systems with only one OS option.

[NexusHumanis]

I have been messing around for a while now, and found the way to show grub. I have tried all the fixes the net could provide so far, but none of them worked. I reinstalled, but even that didn't help. The sudoers file looked just the way it's supposed.
I have started an X-session while logged in as root, and tried opening the user-admin tool. It repeatedly freezes as soon at it opens.
Is there anything left i haven't tried?

EDIT: Ok, while logged in as root in an X-session, as I said, I opened the terminal and ran apt-get update apt-get upgrade. All packages are downloaded and installed fine, and I reboot the system. Now, logged in as user, I find that sudo works fine. What has been going on here?

I must add as additional info that the cd used for the install is the same one as I used when installing Julia on my desktop last week. That install had no such problems.

[dawgdoc]

I'm running LMDE and my sudoers file only contained 3 real lines

Code: Select all

Defaults   env_reset
root   ALL=(ALL) ALL
%sudo ALL=(ALL) ALL

Until reading your post I never looked at editing this file. I do not know why a reinstall would have ended up the same if you overwrote the previous install, unless this is correct for your install. I see from THIS post it is possible to intentionally make your root password different from your user password. Also in that post, I notice his default sudoers is different than mine, I guess he must be using Isadora.

The file had a commented line saying to use visudo to edit it, I then checked synaptic and thought I learned that I do not have such an editor. Then reading the man pages for sudo and visudo I found that it is actually calling nano, which I do have.

OK, I see you have fixed the issue while I was trying to educate myself.

[NexusHumanis]

I'm running LMDE and my sudoers file only contained 3 real lines

Code: Select all

Defaults   env_reset
root   ALL=(ALL) ALL
%sudo ALL=(ALL) ALL

Until reading your post I never looked at editing this file. I do not know why a reinstall would have ended up the same if you overwrote the previous install, unless this is correct for your install. I see from THIS post it is possible to intentionally make your root password different from your user password. Also in that post, I notice his default sudoers is different than mine, I guess he must be using Isadora.

>> Your 3 real lines are the same as mine. It seems nevertheless that the problem was one of permissions rather than passwords. Something wrong with the cd? I suppose I could check for damage tonight.

The file had a commented line saying to use visudo to edit it, I then checked synaptic and thought I learned that I do not have such an editor. Then reading the man pages for sudo and visudo I found that it is actually calling nano, which I do have.

Yes, I used nano to look at the file, but there was really nothing there that seemed out of place.

OK, I see you have fixed the issue while I was trying to educate myself.

>> Educating oneself is a good thing, and a great part of why linux is fun and stimulating.(Not because it NEEDS much fixing, but because it CAN be fixed, nearly regardless how screwed up your system has become. Unlike other OS's I can think of, where most problems are handled by turning one's computer over to a repair shop, who really only reaches for the install discs anyway)

This time however, i feel somewhat uneducated in the end, since I still don't know what actually went wrong. All I know is that upgrading the system fixed it.