I'm sometimes having trouble authenticating and it seems I'm no longer a member of the 'admin' group. Or I am.... but I have two user accounts with the same name and only one of them is... or something equally weird...

When I start my terminal, the command prompt says I'm myself (user 'casey'):

```
casey@netbook:~$

```

When I run the `groups` command without a user argument...
("man groups" sez "if no USERNAME is specified, [groups are printed] for the current process")
... it says I'm a member of only two groups: 'casey' and 'lock'!

```
casey@netbook:~$ groups
casey lock

```

If I *do* specify my username, I suddenly see I'm a member of many groups:

```
casey@netbook:~$ groups casey
casey : casey adm dialout cdrom floppy audio dip video plugdev fuse lpadmin admin sambashare lock

```

These are the same groups I see if I `su` to my own username, and again query `groups` with no arguments. Notice that the prompt username stays the same:

```
casey@netbook:~$ su casey
casey@netbook:~$ groups
casey adm dialout cdrom floppy audio dip video plugdev fuse lpadmin admin sambashare lock

```

But if I `exit` again:

```
casey@netbook:~$ exit
exit
casey@netbook:~$ groups
casey lock

```

Output of `users`:

```
casey@netbook:~$ users
casey casey

```

Example of trouble authenticating:

```
casey@netbook:~$ gksudo gedit /etc/passwd

```

This yielded the following error dialog:

> 
> Failed to run gedit '/etc/passwd' as user root.
>  The underlying authorization mechanism (sudo) does not allow you to run this program. Contact the system administrator.
> 
> 
> 

Continued:

```
casey@netbook:~$ su root
root@netbook:/home/casey# gedit /etc/passwd
(gedit:19566): EggSMClient-WARNING **: Failed to connect to the session manager: None of the authentication protocols specified are supported
**
GLib-GIO:ERROR:/build/buildd/glib2.0-2.28.6/./gio/gdbusconnection.c:2279:initable_init: assertion failed: (connection->initialization_error == NULL)
Aborted
root@netbook:/home/casey# su casey
casey@netbook:~$ gksudo gedit /etc/passwd

```

At this point it launched properly. /-:

Background info: I'm using Natty Narwhal 11.04. All was normal until the other day when I tried to install "Vodafone Mobile Connect", which complained I wasn't a member of groups 'dialout' and 'lock'. I added myself, but it still said the same thing. I copied and pasted a proposed solution from a web-page which google translate had mischievously inserted extra spaces into: `sudo chmod 0660 / etc / ppp / pap-secrets / etc / ppp / chap-secrets`. ::forehead-slap:: This screwed up permissions non-recursively (thank goodness for that!) on the root directory of my file system. It was an easy fix with another `chmod` from my live USB stick. I don't *think* this is related to my current problem, but worth mentioning just in case. Incidentally, I can't seem to remove the 'lock' group from the one 'casey' account, nor add it to the other.