How do I add a user to the "sudo" group?

Question

In /etc/sudoers I see this:

# Allow members of group sudo to execute any command after they have
# provided their password
# (Note that later entries override this, so you might need to move
# it further down)
%sudo ALL=(ALL) ALL

So how do I add a user to that sudo group?

Solution 1

sudo usermod -aG sudo <username>

The a is very important. Without it they'll be removed from all other groups. You will need to either restart your shell/terminal or log out and back in for this to take effect.

See also:

• How can I add a new user as sudoer using the command line?

Solution 2

You can either use the user management GUI for it (same place where you create users), or use sudo adduser <username> sudo in the command line.

Solution 3

You can also use a graphical interface. Click on the gear on the top right of the panel, then select "System Settings" and then "User Accounts"

You need to click the little unlock button to be able to edit things in this window. Then click on the person's account and select the proper dropdown for "Account Type"

Solution 4

Its really simple if you are using Unity as your desktop environment.

If you have created a user already then you can simply change it from Standard to Administrator, else make sure that you selected Administrator when creating a new one.

_{Don't forget to unlock before trying to change it}

Solution 5

sudo gpasswd -a $USER sudo

View more solutions

Comments

[Adam F]

Is anyone else here trying to get sudo to work with no password on ubuntu 17?

[Fabby]

@AdamF look here. Next time ask a new question if you want a speedier response. ;-)

[Fabby]

Coffe-grinder: would you mind changing your acceptance to the most highly upvoted answer as that's a better way to do it? (no password at all)

[Todd Baur]

This is also referred to in the ubuntu documentation on RootSudo albeit they refer to the admin group instead of the sudo group

[Andrea Corbellini]

+1: this is the most easy-to-remember, simple and intuitive way to add a user to a group!

[hhh]

Very cool looking GIF animation! +1 How did you do it? Moved the question here.

[Bruno Pereira]

askubuntu.com/a/123515/25863

[linello]

I have Ubuntu 10.10 but my graphic interface is someway locked. It opens but I when buttons are pressed nothing happens. I suppose is something related to the privileges (I'm actually sudoer). How can I solve this issue?

[Teifi]

I did what u recommended, but terminal told me bash: sudo: command not found, why?

[n0pe]

@Teifi, that means you probably don't have sudo installed or, for some weird reason, it's not in your path. What happens when you run which sudo?

[daboross]

Did you click the 'unlock' button?

[deed02392]

New terminals were not enough. Ended up rebooting for another reason and now it works. Probably log-out/in.

[m3nda]

I know a is for append, but i think it will be more usefull to have append as default behavior. Creating an alias is easy so that will be the way to have groupadd group then just append it. I did the command without -a once today as i didn't remember the -a argument.

[Stephane]

Nice animation! I'd like to do such a gif animation to show new features of my web app ? I'm on Lubuntu 16.04...

[akki]

This gives me an error saying Usage: adduser [options] LOGIN\n adduser -D\n adduser -D [options]\n

[akki]

Although this is an Ubuntu forum, For CentOS I had to do sudo usermod -aG sudo <username>. Because there was no easy way for me to find this out.

[Code-Guru]

"The a is very important." This would have been nice to know before I rebooted my machine.