Home / ubuntu / Questions / 124166
Accepted
oshirowanen
Asked: 2012-04-23 01:48:42 +0800 CST

How do I add myself into the sudoers group? [duplicate]

  • 772

Possible Duplicate:
How do I add a user to the “sudo” group?

I've added myself back into the admin's group I think, by following this.

But I still can't do commands like:

sudo aptitude update

I get the message

oshirowanen is not in the sudoers file.  This incident will be reported.

How do I add myself into the sudoers group now that I am in the admin group?

administration sudo

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Login as root or su to get root prompt

    type visudo

    an editor will open find a line says

    root ALL=(ALL) ALL

    add one with your username below that

    user ALL=(ALL) ALL

    Type ctrl+x Type Y to the prompt

    • 45

  2. If you're in the admin group (or the sudo group starting with Ubuntu 12.04) but that group isn't configured in /etc/sudoers to be able to run commands as root with sudo, you can fix that problem the same way you'd fix a broken sudoers file:

    pkexec visudo

    Then just edit the sudoers file to add whatever entries you need. In particular:

    • Ubuntu systems before 12.04, or those that were upgraded from a version before 12.04, should have this:

      # Members of the admin group may gain root privileges
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL

    • Ubuntu 12.04 and later should have this (even if they also have the above lines because they were upgraded from an earlier release):

      # Allow members of group sudo to execute any command
%sudo   ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

    This pkexec method works (on desktop systems) because Ubuntu systems with a GUI installed have two separate mechanisms for administrators to perform actions as root: sudo, and PolicyKit.

    See this question about a different but similar problem, if you're curious and want more information:

    • 9