How can I change the ownership of the sudoers file from 501 to 0?

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WestVanPete Author

Level 1

61 points

How can I change the ownership of the sudoers file from 501 to 0?

Hi-

I've edited the /etc/sudoers file on a clean install of El Cap and now I can't run the SUDO command. Gives me this:

sudo: /etc/sudoers is owned by uid 501, should be 0

sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting

Now it seems by editing the /etc/sudoers file I've changed the ownership from uid 0 to 501. In Yosemite and before I'd just run 'Repair Permissions' in Disk Utility and I'd be styling..... but this is El Cap.

iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11), null

Posted on Oct 4, 2015 5:52 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Niel

Level 10

726,689 points

Oct 4, 2015 5:57 PM in response to WestVanPete

Restart with the Command and S keys held down, and run the following:

mount -uw /

chown /private/etc/sudoers 0

exit

(134430)

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Answer 2

WestVanPete Author

Level 1

61 points

Oct 4, 2015 6:13 PM in response to Niel

Wow! Thanks very much. That was fast! Solved my problem in under a minute.

Only point to note for other users is that the second line should be "chown 0 /private/etc/sudoers" because the syntax of the Chown command is user first, then filename. (I figured this out quickly)

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