How To Create a Sudo User on Linux | Ubuntu Server

Create a New 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]

There are Two ways to to make a user as a Sudo User:

1. Add the user to sudo group

1. 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.

2. Test sudo access on new user account

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

# su - username

• To ensure that the user has sudo privileges, run the whoami command:

# sudo whoami

You will be prompted to enter the password. If the user has sudo access, the command will print “root”:

Output
root

2. Adding User to the sudoers File

The users’ and groups’ sudo privileges are defined in the /etc/sudoers file. Adding the user to this file allows you to grant customized access to the commands and configure custom security policies.

1. Run visudo command:

# visudo

2. Scroll down to the end of the file and add the following line:

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