Answers: linux - 'user is not in the sudoers file' but actually is

Benjamin Kalloch

I have already read a lot of posts about enabling sudo-access for a specific user but those couldn't help me so far.
The situation is:
I'm running Debian Testing. On the system there are only two accounts: 'root' and a user account 'benny'. The user 'benny' should be able to run commands with root privileges using sudo (of course I installed sudo first), which is why I edited the '/etc/sudoers' file using visudo as follows:

Defaults        env_reset
Defaults        mail_badpass
Defaults        secure_path="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin"

# Host alias specification

# User alias specification

# Cmnd alias specification

# User privilege specification
root    ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
benny   ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL #<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< EDIT HERE!

# Allow members of group sudo to execute any command
%sudo   ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

# See sudoers(5) for more information on "#include" directives:

#includedir /etc/sudoers.d
ALL ALL= NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/g15daemon

This did not work at all - when issuing the 'sudo' command it keeps saying 'benny is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.' So I added benny to the group 'sudo', as it was often suggested:

usermod -aG sudo benny

After a re-login as 'benny' the command

groups

shows

benny cdrom sudo fuse

which seems fine to me. Also

 cat /etc/group | grep sudo

shows

 sudo:x:27:benny

However if I try, for example

sudo apt update

it still keeps saying that benny was not in the sudoers-file.
I've really read a lot about this issue and everyone just advices one of the two steps, I mentioned above.
What am I missing here? I gues it's something really stupid, but I do not see it. Any help is appreciated! Thanks in advance!

Jason Lewis

Have you tried creating a new user and adding that user to the sudo group, to see if that works?

This may help to narrow down where the problem is happening.

note: I had to put this comment in an answer as it requires 50 reputation points to comment. Apologies in advance.

linux - User supposedly not in sudoers file, but already is!

linux ubuntu terminal sudoers

faraz

I'm running Ubuntu Server 11.04. It came time to add User to the sudoers file: so I decided to simple add User to the admin group: usermod -a -G admin user

Then I used visudo to check if admin users had been set to receive sudo privileges. I uncommented the line admin ALL=(ALL) ALL. And viola!

Nothing happened. I've even tried to add user directly into the sudoers file as user ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL, but that failed too.

Ideas?

Defaults env_reset root ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL admin ALL=(ALL) ALL %sudo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

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linux - 'user is not in the sudoers file' but actually is