I'm trying to install a theme, and when I enter the command sudo cp -r $HOME/Desktop/Overglossed /usr/share/themes
the terminal asked for my sudo
password which I entered, however I'm told my password is wrong. What is the problem here? I logged in with the same password, and I don't have cap lock on or anything like that.
This is the first time I have used the terminal, so if this is due to my unfamiliarity with it, please let me know.
I am not always prevented from performing administrative tasks by entering my password. I can install software in the Software Center, for example I installed Chrome (which I have used to work on this question).
Best Answer
First... A Probable Workaround
It's likely you can work around this problem until it's solved by using
pkexec
in place ofsudo
when you want to run a command as root. See "Maybe sudo is Broken" below for details.It's not definite that this will work. If not, one of the other solutions or workarounds here might. If not, this will probably still help you gather information about the problem, which you can add to your question.
(People with this problem other than the asker of this question can create a new question with information about what happened when they tried the techniques here.)
The Basics of This Situation
Most of the time, when people report they cannot effectively enter their password for
sudo
in a terminal, but can authenticate with it graphically at least some of the time, it is because they don't realize that no placeholder characters (like*
) are supposed to appear. Here, it seems that is not the case. If you entered your password correctly and in full before pressing Enter, there really is some problem.To figure out what it is, more information is necessary. Here are some possible causes of
sudo
not accepting the password in the terminal even though you can enter it graphically to install software.1. Maybe the Password is Blank
Suggested by Bruno Pereira.
If your password is blank, i.e., zero characters long, i.e., you just press Enter when asked for your password, change it to something that is not blank.
It's likely you can change your password in System Settings (since you can perform at least some administrative tasks graphically). If that doesn't work, and you can install software, you can install gnome-admin-tools , run
users-admin
(another graphical utility), and change your password that way.If that doesn't work, try running
pkexec passwd $USER
. (pkexec
will prompt graphically for your password if a GUI is available and working, even when used to run CLI commands.)If that doesn't work, try any of these methods; if that doesn't work, try this method.
2. Maybe the Password Contains Weird Characters
If your password contains characters other than the numerals (0-9), capital (A-Z) and lower-case (a-z) letters with no accent marks, and punctuation that appear on a US/English keyboard, change it so it does. If you're using a different locale, then to be safe, you can (temporarily) change your locale as well.
Spaces are ordinarily fine in passwords but as you're having problems it makes sense to try it without them. They're relatively uncommon, so there could be an undiscovered bug triggered by a combination of having a password with spaces in it and some other condition.
3. Maybe the Password is Perfectly Ordinary, But Was Stored Wrong
Even if all one or more characters of your password are commonly used, it's still a good idea to change your password to see if it solves the problem. Also, if you change your password and it does not solve your problem, that is another important piece of information.
I've talked to people in this situation, where changing the password fixed the problem, even though there was nothing particularly wrong with or strange about it originally. I suspect that the problem might have to do with how the password is stored, but it could be that the underlying cause is coincidentally corrected by setting the password, or that the situation was (albeit repeatedly by different people) misreported to me, or that I misunderstood.
4. Maybe You're Not Typing What You Think You Are
Make sure your keyboard layout is what you think it is when you put in your password.
5. Maybe Your Terminal is Misinterpreting Input
Perhaps the password that is being seen is not what you're actually entering. To see if this is the case:
Enter it in the terminal when not entering your password (don't "run" it, and still don't tell us what it is).
Try it in a different terminal application. You're using Terminal; try xterm. (Press Alt+F2 and run
xterm
.)Try it on a virtual console. Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 and see if you can log in. Like when running
sudo
, it's normal for you not to see anything happening as you enter your password. Just type it in and press Enter when you're done.Whether that succeeds or fails, knowing if it worked provides useful information.
Then try actually running
sudo
.To get back to the GUI, press Alt+F7.
6. Maybe sudo Works, But Not when Invoked from the Command Line
To check this, run
gksudo xclock
. You'll be prompted graphically for your password, butsudo
will be used "under the hood."If that works--that is, if a simple graphical clock application appears--then
sudo
works, but (assuming it also failed when you tried running it in another terminal app and in a virtual console), something is wrong with the way it is taking input from command-line interfaces.7. Maybe CLI Password Authentication is Broken
This could occur if there is a common problem preventing
sudo
and other, different ways of asking for passwords on the command line, from working right.Run
su $USER -c 'echo Success'
. You'll be prompted for your password. Type it in (again, it's normal to have nothing appear on the screen as you do), press Enter, and see ifSuccess
appears.If you were unable to get past authentication there, then the problem affects both terminal-based
sudo
and terminal-basedsu
.8. Maybe sudo is Broken
Try running a command with PolicyKit:
pkexec echo Success
A GUI window should come up and ask you for your password; if authentication succeeds,
Success
will appear in the terminal.If this works, you have a workaround for the problem: use
pkexec
instead ofsudo
.If
sudo
is broken, you might be able to fix it, depending on what is wrong withsudo
:8.1. Maybe the installation is messed up.
Try reinstalling
sudo
with:That may fix a corrupted or misconfigured installation.
8.2. Maybe
sudo
is misconfigured in/etc/sudoers
.For misconfigurations relating to unexplained password authentication failures, check the
Defaults
lines in/etc/sudoers
by running:In Ubuntu the output is normally:
If you see
rootpw
,runaspw
, ortargetpw
, this meanssudo
is not necessarily asking for your password.This is particularly likely if you are prompted
[sudo] password for root:
or[sudo] password for some-other-username
instead of[sudo] password for your-username
. But it's worth checking for in any case (as it's easy to check).Even if you don't see any of those three
...pw
terms, you still might see something wrong; if your output ofpkexec grep Defaults /etc/sudoers
is not the same as what's shown above, you should look into that (for example, you can include it when you edit your question to provide details about what happened when you tried all these techniques).If this doesn't reveal anything, take a look at all of
/etc/sudoers
. You can usepkexec less /etc/sudoers
or open the file in an editor withpkexec visudo
. If you don't see anything wrong, I recommend still posting the contents of the file in your question.If you find a problem in
/etc/sudoers
and know what has to be changed, you can edit it usingpkexec visudo
.8.3. Maybe
sudo
is misconfigured in/etc/sudo.conf
.Normally on Ubuntu,
/etc/sudo.conf
does not exist. And that is good--it works normally in that situation. If/etc/sudo.conf
does exist,sudo
may be configured to work in a radically different way. (Or it might be configured to work exactly the same way, and have nothing to do with your problem. Or anything in between.)If this file exists, regardless of what's in it, please provide its complete contents.
If
/etc/sudo.conf
exists, by default the only uncommented lines (i.e., the only lines that don't start with#
) are:This uses the
sudoers
module to control the security policy and interface ofsudo
. If any other module is used, things can be quite different, so that's very relevant information.8.4. Maybe this is a PAM problem, presenting unusually.
This is kind of a stretch, but maybe
sudo
is configured to use pluggable authentication modules and its PAM configuration has a problem.To check, run:
The text in the terminal should look like this:
If any of the bold text differs at all, that suggests a problem.
I got this idea from the upstream
sudo
troubleshooting page (but that page does not suggest the problem will happen this way).9. Maybe It's Something Else
Maybe none of the situations covers your problem. Or maybe the problem is that
sudo
is broken, but none of the sub-situations for that apply.If that's the case, don't give up! (Unless you want to.)
Just provide as much more information as possible, including what happened when you tried each technique or diagnostic step. This will likely shed light on the problem.
This answer is moved, with slight modification, from this question (where it didn't really belong, as it's not clear the OP there really has this problem). Thanks to gertvdijk for helping me recognize the ambiguity there and suggesting this be posted elsewhere instead. (He is not responsible for any errors here, however.)