How To Create a Sudo User on Ubuntu (sudoers)

Steps to Create a New Sudo User

1        Log in to your server as the root user.

ssh root@server_ip_address

2        Use the adduser command to add a new user to your system.

Be sure to replace username with the user that you want to create.

# adduser username

·         Set and confirm the new user’s password at the prompt. A strong password is highly recommended!

Set password prompts:

Enter new UNIX password:

Retype new UNIX password:

passwd: password updated successfully

·         Follow the prompts to set the new user’s information. It is fine to accept the defaults to leave all of this information blank.

User information prompts:

Changing the user information for username

Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default

    Full Name []:

    Room Number []:

    Work Phone []:

    Home Phone []:

    Other []:

Is the information correct? [Y/n]

3        Use the usermod command to add the user to the sudo group.

# usermod -aG sudo username

By default, on Ubuntu, members of the sudo group have sudo privileges.

4    Test sudo access on new user account

·         Use the su command to switch to the new user account.

# su - username

·         As the new user, verify that you can use sudo by prepending “sudo” to the command that you want to run with superuser privileges.

Username$ sudo command_to_run

·         For example, you can list the contents of the /root directory, which is normally only accessible to the root user.

Username$ sudo ls -la /root

·         The first time you use sudo in a session, you will be prompted for the password of the user account. Enter the password to proceed.

Output:

[sudo] password for username:

If your user is in the proper group and you entered the password correctly, the command that you issued with sudo should run with root privileges.