How to add user to sudoers with best practices & examples

How do we add user to sudoers file? How to give user sudo access? How to give root privileges to a user in linux? how to give superuser permission in linux? What are sudo alias? What is the syntax used by sudoers file?

These are some of the common questions user have when they start working with sudoers file. In this tutorial I will give you a detailed overview on sudo privileges and share the proper way to add user to sudoers file.

Overview on sudoers privilege

Normal users operate in limited privilege sessions to limit the scope of their influence on the entire system.
One special user exists on Linux that we know already is root, which has super-user privileges.
This account doesn’t have any restrictions that are present to normal users.
Sudoer is the functionality of the Linux system that can be used by an administrator to provide administrative access to a trusted regular user, without actually sharing the root user’s password.
The administrator simply needs to add the regular user in the sudoers list.
Once a user has been added to the sudoers list, they can execute any administrative command by preceding it with sudo.
Then the user would be asked to enter their own password depending upon the configuration.
After this, the administrative command would be executed the same way as by the root user.

It is very important to update sudoers correctly or else you may break the complete sudoers functionality. There is a particular syntax which must be followed while adding a user or new entry to the sudoers file.

We will discuss about those syntax later in this article. But first let me highlight you the dos and dont’s which you must follow when working with sudoers file.

Recommended guidelines to edit sudoers file

You should avoid using echo "<content>" >> /etc/sudoers method to add any user content to main sudoers file. The reason being, if you follow incorrect syntax then you can break the entire sudoers functionality
Always use “visudo” to edit the /etc/sudoers file. It is again not recommended to use any editor such as vimor nano etc to directly edit the /etc/sudoers file. This is because visudo editor is part of sudo rpm and it will perform a syntax check before we save and exit the sudoers file. Assuming you have provided an incorrect syntax in the sudoers file and try to save and exit the sudoers file, you will get this error prompt:

# visudo
>>> /etc/sudoers: syntax error near line 125 <<<
>>> /etc/sudoers: syntax error near line 126 <<<
>>> /etc/sudoers: syntax error near line 125 <<<
>>> /etc/sudoers: syntax error near line 126 <<<
What now?
Options are:
  (e)dit sudoers file again
  e(x)it without saving changes to sudoers file
  (Q)uit and save changes to sudoers file (DANGER!)

So visudo will warn you for any incorrect syntax, but if you edit /etc/sudoers using any normal editor then there will no syntax check performed and you may end up with incorrect sudoers entry
Another advantage with visudo is that it will protect you from race condition when multiple user try to modify sudoers file at the same time. If visudo is used in parallel when there is already a visudo session then you will get “visudo: /etc/sudoers busy, try again later”
It is always a good practice to leave the default sudoers file untouched, you should add any custom content inside /etc/sudoers.d as which this the chances of corrupting the original sudoers content will be minimal.
By default /etc/sudoers contain below entry

## Read drop-in files from /etc/sudoers.d (the # here does not mean a comment)
#includedir /etc/sudoers.d

So you can create multiple files based on your teams or groups under /etc/sudoers.d/ and add respective sudo permissions for users or groups in your organization. This will make sure other sudo users are not impacted by any syntax error

HINT

visudo itself doesn’t have any editor so it will use the system’s default editor to open sudoers file. In most of the Linux and Unix distros, vim is the default editor so visudo will open sudoers file using vim. To modify this you can modify your user’s .bashrc and add “export EDITOR=/usr/bin/nano” or any other editor of your preference

I hope we are clear on the dos and dont’s before you work on sudoers file. Let us now understand the basic syntax of sudoers file.

Syntax of sudoers file

The syntax usage of sudoers can be little tricky and complicated for complex use cases. To fully explain the syntax of /etc/sudoers, we will use a sample rule and break down each column:

deepak  ALL=(root) /usr/bin/find, /bin/rm

First column

The first column defines what user or group this sudo rule applies to.
In this case, it is the user deepak.
If the word in this column is preceded by a % symbol, it designates this value as a group instead of a user, since a system can have users and groups with the same name.

Second Column

The second value (ALL) defines what hosts this sudo rule applies to.
This column is most useful when you deploy a sudo environment across multiple systems.
For a desktop Ubuntu system, or a system where you don’t plan on deploying the sudo roles to multiple systems, you can feel free to leave this value set to ALL, which is a wildcard that matches all hosts.
For single server deployment this section does not has much usage and can be left to default ALL or provide localhost’s hostname

Third Column

The third value is set in parentheses and defines what user or users the user in the first column can execute a command as.
This value is set to root, which means that deepak will be allowed to execute the commands specified in the last column as the root user.
This value can also be set to the ALL wildcard, which would allow deepak to run the commands as any user on the system.

Fourth Column

The last value (/usr/bin/find, /bin/rm) is a comma-separated list of commands the user in the first column can run as the user(s) in the third column.
In this case, we’re allowing deepak to run find and rm as root with sudo privileges.
This value can also be set to the ALL wildcard, which would allow deepak to run all commands on the system as root.

So now that we know about the basic syntax of sudoers file, let us go ahead and add some users to sudoers file with privilege to execute few commands as root user

How to add user to sudoers

NOTE

This tutorial assumes that you already have a system user or group for which you wish to assign sudo privilege. if you do not have a user then you must create a user or group before following these steps

In this example we want to provide sudo privilege to user “deepak” from my Linux server to be able to execute chown and chmod as root user

Example to understand first field of sudoers file

I will create a new file under /etc/sudoers.d/ by the name “custom”, you can use any name as per your requirement

# touch /etc/sudoers.d/custom

Add the below content in this file using visudo

# visudo --file=/etc/sudoers.d/custom
deepak ALL=(ALL) /usr/bin/chown

Save and exit the file.

Add user to sudoers

Next try to login as deepak user and execute chown as sudo

[deepak@server ~]$ sudo chown
[sudo] password for deepak:
chown: missing operand
Try 'chown --help' for more information.

So the command prompts for password and the execution is successful. You can ignore the “missing operand” error, since I have not used proper command syntax, the command is throwing error. But we know the command was executed successfully with sudo privilege

Now this would explain the first column

Example to understand second field of sudoers file

Let’s understand the usage of second column.

Now we have 100 servers and using some remote tool we are deploying sudoers list to all these 100 servers. Now our of these 100 servers we want user deepak to be allowed to use chown only on the host with hostname “server” so we will use

deepak server=(ALL) /usr/bin/chown

Now the same sudoers script will be deployed to 100 servers but user deepak will be allowed use chown with sudo only on server. If he tries to use chown on other servers, he will get

deepak is not allowed to run sudo on server.  This incident will be reported.

While the same would work on “server” host

But again this is of not too much use when you are working on single server deployment. You can choose to use wildcard ALL or provide the hostname of your host, either should be fine.

So this explains the second column.

Example to understand third field of sudoers file

Let us understand how third column is used in sudoers file.

We have a script which should only be used by user “amit” but due to some requirement we also want user “deepak” to be able to execute this script.

Sample script to verify sudo permission

sudo to the rescue

We will add below content to our /etc/sudoers.d/custom

# visudo --file=/etc/sudoers.d/custom
deepak ALL=(amit) /tmp/amit_script.sh

If deepak tries to call amit_script.sh, he is asked to “Get Lost”

[deepak@server ~]$ /tmp/amit_script.sh
This script can be called only by amit
Get Lost

Then he tries to run the same script as sudo user, but sadly the output says he is not allowed to execute /tmp/amit_script.sh when he knows he was given privilege for this.

[deepak@server ~]$ sudo /tmp/amit_script.sh
[sudo] password for deepak:
Sorry, user deepak is not allowed to execute '/tmp/amit_script.sh' as root on server.example.com.

The problem is, deepak is trying to run amit's script so he must use “sudo -u amit” to be able to execute amit's script as amit user. So let’s give one more try:

[deepak@server ~]$ sudo -u amit /tmp/amit_script.sh
[sudo] password for deepak:
Welcome Amit

Bingo, it worked.

So I hope the third column usage was clear.

The fourth column should be easy to understand. You must provide the list of commands, or scripts with full path separated by a command and whitespace character.

How to use alias in sudoers

There is a concept of alias in sudoers which can keep your sudoers file organized and clean. It is similar to a variable which we use in scripts and codes. Here in the below syntax, all the ALIAS_NAME must be provided in UPPERCASE letters or you will get syntax error.

You can create a user alias using

User_Alias ALIAS NAME USER1, USER2, USER3, ..

To create a command alias

Cmnd_Alias ALIAS_NAME = /path/cmd1, /path/cmd2, /path/cmd3, ..

To create host alias

Host_Alias ALIAS_NAME = server1, server2, ..

NOTE

These are different from groups, as to use a system group you must use %group_name in the first column

For example, I have a scenario where I want to assign permission to execute same set of commands to a bunch of users. Now these users are from different system groups. So in such case I have below possible options

Create a new system group and assign these users to that system group so I can assign all permissions to single system group
I create separate entries for all these users and then assign permission (very lengthy task)
Create a User Alias inside sudoers file and then assign permission in single line

So the third option sounds easy and neat. Hence I will create a new User_Alias and add the usernames to this alias

# visudo --file=/etc/sudoers.d/custom
User_Alias MYADMINS = deepak, rahul

Next assign the permission of commands to this alias

MYADMINS ALL=(ALL) /usr/bin/chown

So now all the users part of MYADMINS alias group will have sudo privilege to execute chown as root user.

Disallow a set of commands in sudoers

We can also prevent users from executing a certain set of commands, scripts inside sudoers. For example, I want user deepak to be able to execute all commands inside /usr/bin except chown command.

So open the sudoers file

# visudo --file=/etc/sudoers.d/custom

Add this entry

deepak ALL=(ALL) /usr/bin/*, !/usr/bin/chown

So here we have allowed all the commands under /usr/bin/* but have added a NOT (!) operator for /usr/bin/chown. You can add multiple commands in the similar format to block the sudo access for these provided commands for respective user or group

Let us verify this permission:

[root@server ~]# su - deepak
Last login: Fri Jul 17 22:53:07 IST 2020 on pts/2

As expected, user deepak is allowed to use chmod

[deepak@server ~]$ sudo chmod
[sudo] password for deepak:
chmod: missing operand
Try 'chmod --help' for more information.

But execution of chown is denied as defined in our configuration

[deepak@server ~]$ sudo chown
Sorry, user deepak is not allowed to execute '/bin/chown' as root on server.example.com.

Remove password prompt for sudo user

By default you may have observed that, every time user tries to execute a command with sudo privilege, they are prompted for user password. This is the default behaviour of sudoers. To overwrite this you must use NOPASSWD in the sudoers file while adding the user permission in the below format (from our last example)

deepak ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/*, !/usr/bin/chown

So now user deepak can execute all the commands with sudo privilege without the need to enter password every time

[deepak@server ~]$ sudo chmod
chmod: missing operand
Try 'chmod --help' for more information.

These can be used with scripting solutions to automate the command execution.

Conclusion

In this tutorial I gave you a complete overview on best practices to use and modify sudoers file. The steps to add user to sudoers with proper syntax and different practical examples, about different alias, and executing sudo commands without password prompt. In production environment, sudoers file are handled very cautiously. The default sudoers file contain a lot of default entries and it may break if you do not modify the this file properly.

Lastly I hope the steps from the article to learn all about sudo privilege and sudoers file on Linux was helpful. So, let me know your suggestions and feedback using the comment section.

You can read more about sudo privilege: