How do I grant sudo privileges to an existing user?

Question

I want to grant a newly created user sudo privileges in Ubuntu.

I tried

sudo adduser hduser admin

but it says no admin group exists. How can I do it?

This was changed recently, which is the reason for the confusion. — Adrian, Jul 26 '12 at 08:29
sudo adduser sudo - did the trick for me. Second sudo is the group name instead of sudo — Jamess, Sep 21 '12 at 12:28

score 249 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 07 '16 at 10:34

249

You need to add the user hduser to the sudo group (which is the "administrators" group in Ubuntu).

If you have already created the user, you can add the user to the sudo group by running the following command in a Terminal:

sudo usermod -a -G sudo hduser

edited Mar 07 '16 at 10:34

vabada

291

answered Jul 26 '12 at 08:22

ish

139,926

50

Note that the user must log off, then back on again for this change to take effect. – Jacob Foshee Jul 05 '13 at 16:01
3

not working ubuntu 14 – Ashish Ratan Jan 08 '16 at 06:23
2

Usage: usermod [options] LOGIN
Options: -c, --comment COMMENT new value of the GECOS field -d, --home HOME_DIR new home directory for the user account -e, --expiredate EXPIRE_DATE set account expiration date to EXPIRE_DATE -f, --inactive INACTIVE set password inactive after expiration to INACTIVE -g, --gid GROUP force use GROUP as new primary group -G, --groups GROUPS new list of supplementary GROUPS -a, --append append the user to the supplemental GROUPS
– Ashish Ratan Jan 08 '16 at 06:24
No problem here using ubuntu 14. Thx. – joedragons Jan 26 '16 at 20:09
Yes , @JacobFoshee is right - "user must log off, then back on again for this change to take effect." – vivekyad4v Nov 04 '16 at 14:43
still if i use visudo on the user i just added to sudo I will get permission denied, why is that ? – Jalal Sordo Dec 17 '16 at 17:23
No problem here using ubuntu 16. – MrSmith42 Mar 06 '17 at 07:17
How do i remove sudo access from existing user ? – Nullpointer Apr 20 '17 at 07:21
1

FYI, In RHEL/CentOS it is: sudo usermod -aG wheel hduser – jeffmcneill Jul 06 '17 at 13:13

score 28 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 18 '17 at 08:32

28

Instead you can try,

sudo adduser hduser sudo

In Ubuntu you need to add the user only to the group sudo.

edited Feb 18 '17 at 08:32

Zanna

70,465

answered Mar 07 '13 at 11:27

Aishwarya

381

score 16 · Answer 3 · edited Nov 21 '13 at 20:14

16

1) Become root. You can do this using sudo -i or becoming root the old fashioned way su -

2) Run visudo

3) I changed this portion of the sudoers file to have my chosen users become sudo users, and you can add users similarly (blank lines introduce to format cleanly):

## User Aliases
## These aren't often necessary, as you can use regular groups
## (ie, from files, LDAP, NIS, etc) in this file - just use %groupname
## rather than USERALIAS
# User_Alias ADMINS = jsmith, mikem dbadmin 
ALL=(ALL) ALL
ics ALL=(ALL) ALL 
csm ALL=(ALL) ALL 
coa ALL=(ALL) ALL

4) Press : and x to write the changes to sudoers and exit vi.

edited Nov 21 '13 at 20:14

Braiam

67,791
32
179
269

answered May 15 '13 at 15:47

octopusgrabbus

551

3

This seems needlessly complicated. Why bother running visudo when the adduser command will do what you want? – Dan Dascalescu Jul 11 '14 at 09:29
2

@dan-dascalescu - $ sudo adduser username sudo won't work if the 'sudo' group does not exist. So adding the user manually is certainly an option. However, it's certainly more elegant to create a sudo group, add it to the sudoers file (e.g. via visudo), then add the appropriate user(s) to that user group. – Jarrett Barnett Oct 02 '15 at 17:47
1

@JarrettBarnett That was the case for me. Thank you for your answer. – Marcel Mar 21 '16 at 22:47

score 5 · Answer 4 · edited Feb 18 '17 at 08:30

5

Edit the sudoers file: sudo visudo

and add:

user    ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

edited Feb 18 '17 at 08:30

Zanna

70,465

answered May 15 '13 at 15:52

Alberto Burgos

121

10

Why bother editing /etc/sudoers when the adduser command will work? – Dan Dascalescu Jul 11 '14 at 09:29
@Zanna You have edited sudo visudo /etc/sudoers Is it correct? AFAIK, it is either sudo visudo or sudo nano /etc/sudoers – d a i s y Feb 18 '17 at 08:29
ah @Lnux you're right, but you should always use visudo to edit /etc/sudoers because it stops you from making a fatal syntax error. I corrected – Zanna Feb 18 '17 at 08:32
1

@DanDascalescu maybe because for some people it doesnt work? – The Fool Dec 26 '20 at 14:04

How do I grant sudo privileges to an existing user?

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