"sudo: can't open /private/etc/sudoers: permission denied"

Did you happen to change anything with your pam configuration in /private/etc/pam.d/sudo or Directory services / authentication or such? This machine isn't bound to LDAP or ActiveDirectory or something is it? This is just something else I thought of that may be causing trouble....

Post the output of these....

ls -lh@Oe /private/etc/pam.d
cat /private/etc/pam.d/sudo

Mine reads like this, fwiw.......

new-host-2:pam.d sean$ ls -lhO@e /private/etc/pam.d
total 88
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel - 102B Sep 23 20:53 chkpasswd
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel - 280B Sep 28 23:49 cups
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel - 243B Sep 23 22:29 ftpd
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel - 362B Sep 23 20:53 login
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel - 191B Sep 23 20:53 other
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel - 185B Sep 23 20:53 passwd
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel - 141B Sep 23 20:53 samba
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel - 403B Sep 23 20:53 sshd
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel - 449B Sep 23 20:53 sshd.serverinstall
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel - 343B Sep 23 20:53 su
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel - 280B Sep 23 20:53 sudo

new-host-2:pam.d sean$ cat /private/etc/pam.d/sudo
# sudo: auth account password session
auth sufficient pam_securityserver.so
auth sufficient pam_unix.so
auth required pam_deny.so
account required pam_permit.so
password required pam_deny.so
session required pam_permit.so

I had the same problem - basically all the permissions were screwed up (not just on sudoers which was the problem). I managed to fix it by doing:

/Applications/Disk Utility in the finder then select your disk and click repair permissions

Worked for me...

You mentioned that you don't want to enable the root account for security reasons. You can enable it and then turn it back off:

How to enable the root user
Mac OS X 10.5 or later

From the Finder's Go menu, choose Utilities.
Open Directory Utility.
Click the lock in the Directory Utility window.
Enter an administrator account name and password, then click OK.
Choose Enable Root User from the Edit menu
Enter the root password you wish to use in both the Password and Verify fields, then click OK.

How to disable the root user
Mac OS X 10.5 or later

Click the Finder icon in the Dock.
From the Go menu, choose Utilities.
Open Directory Utility.
Click the lock in the Directory Utility window.
Enter an administrator account name and password, then click OK.
Choose Disable Root User from the Edit menu.

Message was edited by: BillC37

If it makes you feel any better, I'm getting this same message. I don't know exactly why, and yes I repaired permissions, etc. etc., just like you.

Bizarre 10.5.2. quirk, that we'll someday discover the reason for, but will remain mysterious for a good while?

John

Why are you using sudo? You shouldn't need to. That will run your game as root, which you don't want to do.

just run:

sh ascent.sh
sh logonserver.sh

Remember: sudo doesn't hurt your OS, users who enter admin passwords do.

Message was edited by: petrock

Do you mean you have been running +sudo su+? If so, that will essentially run whatever commands that come after that as if you had put sudo in front of it. It makes that Terminal session run as root. You shouldn't need to do that. Very dangerous...

As for your 10.5.2 update issue, post the link to the thread you wrote up about it and I'll take a look.

Keep in mind, permission problems can be the file itself, such as /private/etc/sudoers, or anything above the file, such as the /, /private, or /private/etc directories themselves.

I just solved this exact problem for a user at macrumors, and it was ultimately the group permissions on / itelf!

Here's what the perms should look like
$ ls -lad / /private /private/etc
drwxrwxr-t@ 32 root admin 1156 Feb 18 15:07 /
drwxr-xr-x@ 6 root wheel 204 Nov 29 22:15 /private
drwxr-xr-x 87 root wheel 2958 Feb 19 19:27 /private/etc

in his case, the root directory was:
drwx---rwx+ 33 root admin 1190 Feb 14 23:38 /

Since sudo access isn't available, it's not surprising that commands that need to run as root (such as diskutil repairpermissions) would not work properly. To fix this, you must get root authority and fix the appropriate permission. Without access to sudo, single user mode is the most straightforward way to do this:

Reboot into single user mode (hold Option S while booting until it switches to text mode)

At the single user prompt, type: /sbin/fsck -fy

This checks the filesystem integrity

Then type: /sbin/mount -wu /

This mounts the root filesystem as read/writable.

Next correct the broken directory permission. For the example above, it was the perms for /, therefore:

Next type: /bin/chmod 1775 /

Type: /bin/sync

This will make sure the change is written to the filesystem.

Type: exit

Your mac will continue booting as normal and life should be good! sudo should now work. At this point, I'd recommend a repair permissions in Disk Utility to correct anything else that may not be right.

Try this:

*sudo su*

*cat /etc/sudoers*

wherein you'll note that wheel and admin authorization are commented out, which leads me to conclude you hosed something up on Ascentemu so it won't run as it did before. Maybe you'll have recompile the thing.

Hmm, so it's the exact same permission problem as the guy on macrumors. Interesting coincidence, wonder if there's a common cause.

Anyway, no need for iChat or anything, just do the following and you're done!

Reboot into single user mode (hold Option S while booting until it switches to text mode)

Once it's stopped at a prompt, type each of these commands in turn. Some of them will return immediately to the prompt without output but they are still working:

/sbin/fsck -fy
/sbin/mount -wu /
/bin/chmod 1775 /
/bin/sync
exit

Let us know how it goes!