On Wed, 13 Jun 2012, Mike Miller wrote:

> I had somehow accidentally created two copies of the group "staff", one 
> with gid 50 and another with gid 1000.  So I wanted to get rid of the 
> one with gid 1000 and change everyone over to the group with gid 50.
>
> When I edited /etc/passwd, I changed every :1000: to :50: because when I 
> looked at the file I thought they were all groups, but it turns out that 
> exactly one was not -- it was my uid.  So I changed my record in the 
> passwd file such that my uid is now 50 instead of 1000, but I am logged 
> in as 1000, which no longer exists.  So when I try to sudo, it won't let 
> me, always saying:
>
> sudo: unknown uid: 1000
>
> I suppose I can boot to Live CD and change the /etc/passwd file 
> appropriately.  Is there any easier way to do it?


Yes - figured it out.  I logged in remotely via ssh via my username.  It 
then assigned me to the new uid I had created.  I guess /etc/sudoers has 
my name rather than uid listed, so I was in, made changes, golden.

Sorry to bug you with this!

Mike