Apt-get, no sudoers file

Question

I am trying to install a module using apt-get.

I do the following:
sudo apt-get install

But I get the following error:
sudo: can't stat /etc/sudoers: No such file or directory
sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting

I have been trying to google the answer but can't find any solution to the problem. How can I solve this?

Answer 1

sudo relies on a database of allowed users and actions in /etc/sudoers. This error occurs because this file does not exist, so sudo doesn't know who is authorized to do what.

You need to recreate /etc/sudoers with a valid configuration. Assuming you want to authorize users in group "sudo" to elevate to root, this would work (as root):

cat > /etc/sudoers << 'EOF'
root ALL=(ALL) ALL
%sudo ALL=(ALL) ALL
EOF

If you can't get a root shell any other way, or your root password is disabled, perhaps the easiest way to do this is to reboot, set init to your shell, then reboot again. For example, with GRUB 2, hit e at the bootloader to edit your menu entry, add init=/bin/bash to your kernel parameters, press F10 to boot, and run the above command from the shell that appears.