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I managed to get myself into quite the corner.

I messed up permissions to /usr/bin/ and all subdirectories, e.g. root is no longer owner of /usr/bin/sudo. As a result, I get the infamous /usr/bin/sudo must be owned by uid 0 and have the setuid bit set error, which I found the above link to solve.

However, when I try to boot to either Recovery or an installation USB to re-install Ubuntu, I only get a black screen when trying to enter grub. From posts like this and this, I've gathered that grub is hidden in recent releases of Ubuntu. The issue now is that I cannot edit /etc/default/grub since I don't have sudo access...and we've come full circle.

EDIT:

I now believe that my blank screen when I press ESC at boot is because of nouveau kernel drivers, per this link. But I cannot disable those at grub during boot without sudo access.

ndeboldt
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1 Answers1

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I ended up fixing it, although I don't feel particularly elegant with my solution.

In the end, I disconnected my boot SSD and turned on the computer with the live USB I created connected. Grub came up and I was able to boot from the live USB. I elected to re-install Ubuntu from the USB, and reconnected my SSD. It was recognized and I was able to install to it. Problem solved!

ndeboldt
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