Problem with adduser on new install

Question

I am a noob trying to get an install of ubuntu 14.04 LTS up and running on a virtual server on linode. I have not done much on it yet. Earlier today I tried to add some users. I was able to add one non-admin test user just fine. I used the command

adduser testuser

I then wanted to add a test user with admin privileges. I used the command

adduser testadminuser sudo

did not work. comes back with the error

adduser: the user testadminuser does not exist. 

It almost looks like no sudo groups exist. I used a canned load by the hosting site: I would think it is set up for adding an admin user. I think it is a user error, but am stymied.

I did look at /etc/groups, and there is no sudo group.

Help!

Solution

The syntax:

adduser <username> <group> 

is for adding an existing user to an existing group. So you will have to create the testadminuser before adding to any group:

adduser testadminuser
adduser testadminuser sudo

You can use the usermod command to combine both steps, but that is a bit more involved.

Comments

[muru]

Is there a wheel or admin group present? You can see which group has admin privileges by looking at /etc/sudoers.

[grantbow]

Thanks @muru for this precise answer. Also after reading your suggestion, looking in /etc/sudoers on my 12.04 system the default group "admin" is for gaining root privileges while the default group "sudo" is more powerful and can execute any command. It should be similar on 14.04 and can easily be checked.

[J-Logger]

Thanks to both of you (muru, grantbownam) for your answers. You helped a noob get to the next step.

[muru]

@J-Logger if the answer solved the problem, you can accept it by clicking on the tick next to it.

[J-Logger]

thanks agian... just did that. says 1 answer, but has not changed it to green... ???

[muru]

@J-Logger that's fine. Might be some temporary bug. :)

[David]

Hello. There is not such Linux distro as Debian Ubuntu. You have run the name of 2 different distros together.