How to Add User To Sudo Group on Ubuntu

Posted on 12 Oct 2021

Sudo command on terminal console

Photo by Gabriel Heinzer

TLDR;

Create a new user:

adduser <username>

Add a new user to sudo group:

usermod -aG sudo <username>

Create A New User To The System

  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.

    # replace the <username>
adduser <username>

  3. You will be prompted to create and verify a password for the user.

    Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully

  4. Next, you’ll be asked to fill in some information about the new user. It is fine to accept the defaults and leave this information blank.

    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]

Adding the User to the sudo Group

Next, use the usermod command to modify a user account and add the user to the sudo group.

# replace the <username>
usermod -aG sudo <username>

The -aG option tells the system to append the user to the specified group. In this scenario we are appending the user with username: <username> into the sudo group.

Verify sudo Access

To test that the new sudo permissions are working, run the su command to switch to the new user account and you’ll be prompted to enter the user password.

# replace the <username>
su - <username>

For example:

root@vm:~# su - <username>
Password:
<username>@vm:~$

Notice the user has changed. Now, try to list the directory of the /root directory, which is normally only accessible to the root user.

Note: The first time you use sudo in a session, you will be prompted for the password of that user’s account.

sudo ls -la /root
[sudo] password for <username>: