Cannot authenticate Admin account in Linux Mint

Question

On the "User Accounts" settings in Linux Mint, I changed the settings so that the Admin account didn't require a password.

To change any settings I have to click the unlock button and type in a password. However, as I removed the password for the only account I now cannot change the settings.

How can this be fixed?

Answer 1

Boot with the liveCD, or perphaps you have a "recovery mode" entry on your grub, perphaps you can login to root account. Else do it with the LiveCD/DVD. Now that you are logged as root, you can use the root account to edit /etc/sudoers:

#Look for something like this 
root    ALL=(ALL)       ALL 
someoneigna ALL=(ALL) ALL #Add yourself below

Add your user, save. Now reboot, login to your account, and change the root account password using sudo passwd root:

[someoneigna@FedoraX2 ~]$ sudo passwd root
[sudo] password for someoneigna: 
Changing password for user root.
New password: 
Retype new password: 
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.

It is insecure to leave the root account without password, and you should not use root all the time. If you want to do things without typing the root account password, just add yourself to the root group in /etc/group.