User Feedback :: /etc/sudoers not readable?

I'm running dsl-1.2.1 as a live CD and I'm unable to gain root access as the permissions on /etc/sudoers are 0440 and the owner and group are both "root". Any advice?

UPDATE:
After rebooting, I'm no longer getting an Input/Output error when attempting to become root with "sudo su". So there is not a problem with the permissions on /etc/sudoers and I'll just reboot if I encounter the issue again.

original here.