How to Create a New Sudo User on CentOS Linux Server

The sudo command is designed to allow users to run programs with the security privileges of another user, by default the root user.

In this post, we will show you how to create a new user with sudo access on CentOS systems. You can then use this user account to execute administrative commands without a need to logging in to your CentOS server as a root user.

Create a Sudo User in CentOS Linux Server

Note Note: By default on CentOS, users in the group wheel are granted with sudo access. If you want to configure sudo for an existing user, just add your user to the wheel group, as shown in step 4.

1. Log in to your system as the root user:

ssh root@server_ip_address

2. Create a new user account using the useradd command. Don’t forget to replace username with the user name that you want to create:

useradd username

3. Run the passwd command to set a password for the new user

passwd username

You will be prompted to confirm the password. Make sure you use a strong password.

[root@ub20 ~]# passwd bonben
Changing password for user bonben.
New password:
Retype new password:
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.

4. By default on CentOS systems, members of the group wheel are granted with sudo access. Add the new user to the wheel group:

usermod -aG wheel username

Test the sudo access using the new account

ssh bonben@server_ip_address

To use sudo, simply prefix the command with sudo and space. The first time you use sudo in a session, you will be prompted to enter the user password.

For example, to list the contents of the /root directory you would use sudo ls -l /root command:

Using username "bonben".
[email protected]'s password:
[bonben@centos7 ~]$ sudo ls -l /root

We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System
Administrator. It usually boils down to these three things:

    #1) Respect the privacy of others.
    #2) Think before you type.
    #3) With great power comes great responsibility.

[sudo] password for bonben:
total 4
-rw-------. 1 root root 1205 Sep 13  2020 anaconda-ks.cfg

You have learned how to create a user with sudo privileges. You can now log in to your CentOS server with this user account and use sudo to run administrative commands.