I receive the message: “<username> is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.”. How do I enable sudo?

Posted under Linux, Shell by westminster

The sudo command allows users to perform tasks as another user - most commonly, the root user. Using sudo instead of su - has significant advantages. Most notably is that all operations performed with sudo are logged to: /var/log/secure.

To use the sudo command, the user (in this article, the user is ned) must be added to the: /etc/sudoers configuration file.

1. At the user terminal, type:su -then press: Enter. When prompted, type the root password then press: Enter again. The terminal prompt will change from: $ to: #, indicating that you are now in a root terminal session.
2. At the root prompt, type:visudo then press: Enter. The sudoers file will be displayed.
3. Press the down arrow, until you locate: ## Allows people in group wheel to run all commands # %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL
4. Uncomment: # %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL by deleting the hash (#). The line should now look like:## Allows people in group wheel to run all commands %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL
5. Write your changes to the file by pressing: Esc (the Escape key) followed by :wq (that’s “:”wq).
6. Now press: Enter. You will be returned to the root terminal.
7. At the root terminal, type: groups nedwhere: ned is the username of the account that you are adding to sudoers. Press: Enter. The result should be similar to:ned : nedThis indicates that the account: ned belongs to the group: ned.
8. We will now add the account to the group: wheel. Type:usermod -G ned,wheel nedthen press: Enter.
    It is important that you remember to add both groups (wheel and ned).
9. Now type: groups ned then press: Enter. The result should be similar to:ned : ned wheelThis indicates that the account: ned now belongs to the group: ned and the group: wheel. You may now run terminal commands using sudo instead of su -.