/etc/sudoers permission denied

[cdopher]

Something screwed up my permissions big time and all of a sudden, I couldn't install kexts no matter how I tried. In Terminal, typing "sudo su" resulted in the dreaded "/etc/sudoers: permission denied" problem.

 

It boils down to this: permission on the root directory ( known as /) can only be fixed by being logged in as root. But you can't log in as root because the permission are set wrong. Oh what to do?

 

Other forums mention logging in in Single User mode (hold command S while booting), but that didn't work for my Acer D250 hackintosh. And "single user mode" in Chameleon is not the same. So what do?

 

I discovered that holding command-S (alt-S on the keyboard) while letting Snow Leopard boot gives a login screen with the user account and Other... Picking that, I put in "root" as the user and the root's password (which is usually the same as your first admin account password; if not, can be changed with the Directory Utility - look it up).

 

So once logged in as root, I could open terminal and get the commands to run that were needed to fix the / directory permissions.

 

You will find THOSE commands here on page 3:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?t...30&tstart=0

 

(What the commands do is explained on page 2 of that discussion.)

 

Back in regular account, after a reboot, I was finally able to once again install kexts as expected.

 

Still hasn't helped me get my ethernet card working though LOL

[nmarques]

 Mount it on another system (Linux, Windows, *BSD, OS X, etc) and fix the permissions. 

 

 I'm not sure if OS X has "visudo", but you should use "visudo" to edit the sudoers and not a simple editor like vi, emacs, nano or whatever. That way you will never mess up with it.

[CompGuy49]

Mount it on another system (Linux, Windows, *BSD, OS X, etc) and fix the permissions.

 

I'm not sure if OS X has "visudo", but you should use "visudo" to edit the sudoers and not a simple editor like vi, emacs, nano or whatever. That way you will never mess up with it.

 

Thanks!