How To Create a Sudo User on Ubuntu [Quickstart]

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 to your system.

   Be sure to replace username with the user that you want to create.

   adduser username
   
   

   • Set and confirm the new user’s password at the prompt. A strong password is highly recommended!

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

   • Follow the prompts to set the new user’s information. It is fine to accept the defaults to leave all of this information blank.

     User information prompts:
     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]
     

3. Use the usermod command to add the user to the sudo group.

   usermod -aG sudo username
   
   

   By default, on Ubuntu, members of the sudo group have sudo privileges.

4. Test sudo access on new user account

   • Use the su command to switch to the new user account.

     su - username
     
     

   • As the new user, verify that you can use sudo by prepending “sudo” to the command that you want to run with superuser privileges.

     sudo command_to_run
     
     

   • For example, you can list the contents of the /root directory, which is normally only accessible to the root user.

     sudo ls -la /root
     
     

   • The first time you use sudo in a session, you will be prompted for the password of the user account. Enter the password to proceed.

     Output:
     [sudo] password for username:
     

     If your user is in the proper group and you entered the password correctly, the command that you issued with sudo should run with root privileges.

Here is a link to a more detailed user management tutorial:

• How To Add and Delete Users on an Ubuntu Server