Can't use sudo error with PAM: No such file or directory

Troubleshooting
1

Creating a bug report/issue

Required Information

  • DietPi version 8.21.1
  • Distro version | buster 1
  • Kernel version | Linux DietPi 5.10.103-v7l+ #1529 SMP Tue Mar 8 12:24:00 GMT 2022 armv7l GNU/Linux
  • Architecture | armhf
  • SBC model | RPi 4 Model B (armv71)
  • Power supply used | Official RPi powersupply
  • SD card used | SanDisk ultra

Additional Information (if applicable)

  • Software title | sudo
  • used to work without issue, recently checked for a routine update but it now fails

Steps to reproduce

  1. use sudo with any command
  2. error returned: sudo: unable to initialize PAM: Invalid argument
  3. I have checked /etc/pam.d/* files and they seem ok

Expected behaviour

  • password is prompted
  • command is executed with admin privilages

Actual behaviour

  • error returns
  • command isn’t executed

Extra details

  • Because of this I cannot inspect journalctl logs as it requires su privileges and other such commands like dietpi-update
2

Did you modify or change anything?
If this appears out of the blue without any user interaction, I would guess data corruption is the cause of this.maybe you can perform a filesystem check.
A workaround, until we found the cause, could be to log in as root or change to root.
If you are already logged in as dietpi or whatever, you can do

su -l root
3

I’ve not modified or logged in for a long time. I use ssh to login which does work, but trying your command su -l root returns Segmentation fault

4

uhhh that sounds like some corruption. I see your system is quite old, running Debian Buster still. Maybe SD card ist giving up slowly.

5

that’s a shame, this is already a replacement for the last one.

Any suggestions on what to install the OS on for RPis? Are USB connected HDs fast enough? I don’t really store anything on the SD, I use a NAS, the SD is just for the OS and programs

6

You are running Debian Buster, how old is your SD card?

The quality of the SD card is crucial, cards that are too cheap die more quickly

Usually HDD/SDD are faster than SD cards.

But I/O speed doesn’t seems to matter in your case

Theoretically, you can also use a USB stick, it does not have to be a HDD/SSD. Another alternativ is to use RaspiKey eMMC modul for Raspberry Pi device.

7

Thanks for your advice, I may look into a USB drive in that case for the future, however I would like to recover as much as possible from this drive if I can.

Is there anything I can do from the position I’m in without having to mount this drive on another system and backing up my settings and programs?