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How To Add User to Sudoers & Add User to Sudo Group on CentOS 7

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How To Add User to Sudoers & Add User to Sudo Group on CentOS 7 

The sudo command stands for “Super User DO” and temporarily elevates the privileges of a regular user for administrative tasks. The sudo command in CentOS provides a workaround by allowing a user to elevate their privileges for a single task temporarily. 

This guide will walk you through the steps to add a user to sudoers in CentOS. 


Prerequisites 

  • A system running CentOS 7 
  • Access to a user account with root privileges 

Add User to Sudoers on CentOS 


Step 1: Login as Administrator 

If you’re working on a local machine, log in to the system with administrator credentials. 

If you’re connecting to a remote machine (over a network), open a terminal window and enter the command: 




The server_ip_address is the network IP address of the server you’re logging into. Enter your credentials when prompted. 


Step 2: Create a New Sudo User 

To add a new sudo user, open the terminal window and enter the command: 



Use the actual username for your new user in place of UserName. 

Next, create a password for the new user by entering the following in your terminal window: 



The system should display a prompt in which you can set and confirm a password for your new user account. If successful, the system should respond with
“all authentication tokens updated successfully.” 


How to Add Users to Sudo Group 

By default, CentOS 7 has a user group called the “wheel” group. Members of the wheel group are automatically granted sudo privileges. Adding a user to this group is a quick and easy way to grant sudo privileges to a user. 


Step 1: Verify the Wheel Group is Enabled 

Your CentOS 7 installation may or may not have the wheel group enabled. 

Open the configuration file by entering the command: 

 



 
Scroll through the configuration file until you see the following entry: 

 


If the second line begins with the # sign, it has been disabled and marked as a comment. Just delete the # sign at the beginning of the second line so it looks like the following: 

 


Then save the file and exit the editor. 

 

Step 2: Add User to Group 

To add a user to the wheel group, use the command: 





As usual, replace UserName with the name of the user receiving sudo privileges. 


Step: 3 Switch to the Sudo User 


Switch to the new (or newly-elevated) user account with the su (substitute user) command: 





Enter the password if prompted. The terminal prompt should change to include the UserName. 


Enter the following command to list the contents of the /root directory: 




 

The terminal should request the password for UserName. Enter it, and you should see a display of the list of directories. Since listing the contents of /root requires sudo privileges, this works as a quick way to prove that UserName can use the sudo command. 


Alternative: Add User to Sudoers Configuration File 

 

If there’s a problem with the wheel group, or administrative policy prevents you from creating or modifying groups, you can add a user directly to the sudoers configuration file to grant sudo privileges. 


Step 1: Open the Sudoers File in an Editor 

In the terminal, run the following command: 




This will open the /etc/sudoers file in a text editor. 


Step 2: Add the New User to file 

Scroll down to find the following section: 

 




Right after this entry, add the following text: 

 

 



Replace UserName with the username you created in Step 2. This section should look like the following: 

 




Save the file and exit. 


Step 3: Test Sudo Privileges for the User Account 

Switch user accounts with the su (substitute user) command: 

 



 

Enter the password for the account, if prompted. The terminal prompt should change to include UserName. 

List the contents of the /root directory: 

 



 

Enter the password for this user when prompted. The terminal should display a list of all the directories in the /root directory. 

Conclusion 

This guide showed you how to add a user to sudoers in CentOS or modify the privileges of an existing sudo user. 

 

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