How to Create a Sudo User on Ubuntu

The sudo command provides a mechanism for granting administrator privileges to normal users. This guide will show you the easiest way to create a sudo user on Ubuntu. After that, you can use this user account to execute administrative commands without a need to logging in to your Ubuntu server as a root user.

Create a sudo user on Ubuntu#

Following are the steps to create a new user and give sudo access to it. You can skip user creation steps if you wants to give sudo access to existing user.

First, Login to your Ubuntu server as root user.

ssh root@server ip address

Create a new user account using adduser command. Replace demouser with your desired user name:

adduser demouser

You will be prompted to set new password and retype the new user password. It’s recommended to set a strong password with combination of alphanumeric and special characters.

Adding user `demouser' ...
Adding new group `demouser' (1001) ...
Adding new user `demouser' (1001) with group `demouser' ...
Creating home directory `/home/demouser' ...
Copying files from `/etc/skel' ...
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully

Once you set password it will make a directory for a new user and make copy necessary configuration files. After that it will prompt to enter new user’s information. These are optional questions so If you want to leave all of this information blank just press ENTER to accept the defaults.

Changing the user information for demouser
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]

By default on Ubuntu machine, members of the sudo group are granted with sudo access. Now, user is created and we will add new user to sudo group to grant sudo access.

usermod -aG sudo demouser

Test sudo access#

Login using new created user or you can switch to the new created user by type :

su - demouser

Use the sudo command to run the whoami command:

sudo whoami

If new user account have sudo access then output of given command will be root as below :

Output
root

Now you can use sudo by just type sudo before any command and give space :

sudo ls -la /root

First time it will prompt you to enter user password for that session :

Output
[sudo] password for demouser:

Conclusion#

You have learned how to create a user with sudo privileges. You can now log in to your Ubuntu server with this user account and use sudo to run administrative commands.

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment below.