Corrupted update manager and package manager

In a terminal window (Applications, Accessories menu) , try

sudo chown root:root /etc/sudoers

This will make "root" the owner

Doesn't work I still get:
brett@brett-laptop:~$ sudo chown root:root /etc/sudoers
sudo: /etc/sudoers is owned by gid 1001, should be 0

I hope this doesn't mean I have to reinstall Ubuntu again. Last time I uninstalled Gnome games using the add/remove and this somehow corrupted the operating system. I was trying to free up space for Ubuntu 8.40 upgrade but because the package manager was corrupted I had to reinstall ubuntu with the new version. I just hope I don't have to reinstall ubuntu. I guess this prove the point that there is no such thing as a stable operating system.

Ok, try it without the sudo

chown root:root /etc/sudoers

Can you post the result of

ls -al /etc/sudoers

brett@brett-laptop:~$ chown root:root /etc/sudoers
chown: changing ownership of `/etc/sudoers': Operation not permitted
brett@brett-laptop:~$ su
Password:
root@brett-laptop:/home/brett# chown root:root /etc/sudoers
root@brett-laptop:/home/brett# ls -al /etc/sudoers
-r--r----- 1 root root 470 2008-05-17 07:52 /etc/sudoers
root@brett-laptop:/home/brett# sudo chown root:root /etc/sudoers
sudo: /etc/sudoers is owned by gid 1001, should be 0

Still doesn't work.

Found a similar issue elsewhere with a solution.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=691604

Unfortunately even that solution does not work. I was able to install updates in recovery mode but didn't fix problem.

Can you paste in the contents of your /etc/sudoers file
Mine looks like the following

# /etc/sudoers
#
# This file MUST be edited with the 'visudo' command as root.
#
# See the man page for details on how to write a sudoers file.
# Host alias specification

# User alias specification

# Cmnd alias specification

# Defaults

Defaults !lecture,tty_tickets,!fqdn

# User privilege specification
root ALL=(ALL) ALL

# Members of the admin group may gain root privileges
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL

Can you boot in recovery mode and past the results of

chgrp root /etc/sudoers

And then, to restart...

shutdown -r now

Hello

This link also provides some info:

http://psychocats.net/ubuntu/fixsudo

Bhavani Shankar.

I am also getting this message and have tried
sudo chown root:root /etc/sudoers
and
chown root:root /etc/sudoers as root
and
booting into recovery mode and
chgrp root /etc/sudoers

And then, to restart...

shutdown -r now

my sudoers file look the same as the one posted

My group file look like this

daemon:x:1:
bin:x:2:
sys:x:3:
lp:x:7:cupsys
mail:x:8:
news:x:9:
uucp:x:10:
man:x:12:
proxy:x:13:
www-data:x:33:
backup:x:34:
list:x:38:
irc:x:39:
gnats:x:41:
games:x:60:
nogroup:x:65534:
dhcp:x:101:
syslog:x:102:
klog:x:103:
avahi-autoipd:x:109:
messagebus:x:110:
avahi:x:111:
lpadmin:x:113:
haldaemon:x:114:
gdm:x:118:
david:x:1000:
admin:x:0:
root:x:1001:root,wizball
ssl-cert:x:100:
ssh:x:104:
adm:*:4:
tty:*:5:
disk:*:6:
kmem:*:15:
dialout:*:20:
fax:*:21:
voice:*:22:
cdrom:*:24:
floppy:*:25:
tape:*:26:
sudo:*:27:
audio:*:29:
dip:*:30:
operator:*:37:
src:*:40:
shadow:*:42:
utmp:*:43:
video:*:44:
sasl:*:45:
plugdev:*:46:
staff:*:50:
users:*:100:
fuse:x:105:
netdev:x:106:
slocate:x:107:

Anyone got any more suggestions?

This started when my machine went down during an update I think.

Many thanks