Comments on: How to add users to /etc/sudoers

By: Give Yourself The Proper Linux Privileges on Your New Machine

Give Yourself The Proper Linux Privileges on Your New Machine — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 06:51:26 +0000

[...] procedure, it is one that is easily forgotten. Once you have given yourself sudo privileges you can give them to other Linux users as well, whether you have multiple profiles set up for other users on your [...]

By: Linux Shell Scripting Tutorial – A Beginner’s handbook - Amit Agarwal

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:36:41 +0000

[...] How to add users to /etc/sudoers (ghacks.net) [...]

By: Links 6/1/2010: More Nexus Thoughts | Boycott Novell

Links 6/1/2010: More Nexus Thoughts | Boycott Novell — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 21:47:43 +0000

[...] How to add users to /etc/sudoers [...]

By: Jason B

Jason B — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 23:05:18 +0000

A very useful feature is to allow specific programs to be run through sudo without being prompted for a password.

On my home machine I have a small script that runs aptitude and, generally being too lazy to enter a password, I have authorized myself as follows:

jason ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/aptitude

Make sure you use ‘whereis’, or equivalent, to get the correct path.

By: jh

jh — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 18:10:55 +0000

“1. It will do syntax checking and refuse to save a broken sudoers file.”

are you sure, txttechdog?

# visudo
>>> sudoers file: syntax error, line 26 <<<
What now? h
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!)

What now? Q

By: txtechdog

txtechdog — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 17:54:25 +0000

There is an error in your article. You state that you cannot just open the /etc/sudoers file in a text editor and make changes. This is not true. While using visudo is strongly recommended, it is not required. The advantages to using visudo over some other text editor are:

1. It will do syntax checking and refuse to save a broken sudoers file.
2. It does file locking so that only one person at a time can use visudo to edit the file.

The problem with the file locking is that it doesn’t prevent someone from just opening the file in some other editor and changing it while visudo is running.

You can even write custom Perl or other scripts that do modifications to /etc/sudoers for you when you create new user accounts.

By: jh

jh — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 17:27:39 +0000

visudo also protects against configuration errors by the visudoer :

# visudo
>>> sudoers file: syntax error, line 26 <<<
What now? e

By: Jordi

Jordi — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 08:58:13 +0000

heh, I also like Phil Collins ;-)

Thanks for this great and funny article!

By: ph

ph — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 08:15:19 +0000

Note that the GUI-tool mentioned is not a front-end for sudo management. It only handles memberships in OS-groups (/etc/group) and relies on sudo being already prepared with the following line in /etc/sudoers

%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL

By: Linux: Benutzerberechtigungen in der /etc/sudoers festlegen | SchönSchriften

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 19:01:48 +0000

[...] hat vor einigen Tagen in einem kurzen Post beschrieben, wie unter Linux auf einfache Weise Benutzerberechtigungen in der /etc/sudoers bearbeitet werden [...]