Super User Privilege

Introduction and Background

• Question: How to give the privilege like super_user to a custom (normal user)?

Basic command and Several parameters

• First, create a user with its password:

# useradd user01            # format useradd <username>
# passwd user01              # format passwd <username>

• Notice command adduser is much helpful than useradd, including auto creating home directory, etc.

$ sudo adduser --home homePath account

• The above commands are trying to add a new user with auto-set its home folder located on /home/user01 . Next promote this user or a group to super_user privilege.

# vim /etc/sudoers

The file sudoers maintains the privilege like super_user for every terminal user. Find the similar content with the following line.

## Allow root to run any commands anywhere
root    ALL=(ALL)    ALL

• Try to promote only one user with super_user-like privilege, then add the following on the bottom of the above line.

user01    ALL=(ALL)    ALL

• The following is the example to test whether it works.

$ cd /var/www/html
$ sudo mkdir ./test                # with your own password, not super user

If the folder named test could be created under /var/www/html, the super_user like privilege of the special user has already finished. The 'sudo' is similar with ubuntu distribution.

• Try to promote one group named USER01 with super_user-like privilege, then add the following on the bottom of the above line.

%USER01 ALL=(ALL)    ALL

And the same procedure with the test of the single user mentioned above.

• If you want to skip entering the password, the following line is the way.

%USER01 ALL=(ALL)    NOPASSWD:    ALL

• [Optional] If you want to delete the user, the following is the command. (Notice: -r is the parameter for auto-deleting all folder related with this user, including /home/(username))

# userdel -r user01                # format userdel -r <username>