How to Add a User and Grant Root Privileges on CentOS 7

Posted on August 29, 2014 by Justin Palmer | Updated: March 10, 2021

Category: Technical Support | Tags: Adduser, CentOS, CentOS 7, CLI, Command-line, Linux, Root, Sudo, User, Visudo

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Users via Command Line 101: Basic User Interaction

I. How to Add a User and Grant Root Privileges on CentOS 7
II. How to Remove (Delete) a User on CentOS 7

Preflight Check

These instructions are intended specifically for adding a user on CentOS 7.
I’ll be working from a Liquid Web Self Managed CentOS 7 server, and I’ll be logged in as root.

How to Add a User and Grant Root Privileges on CentOS 7

Step 1: Add the User

It’s just one simple command to add a user. In this case, we’re adding a user called mynewuser :

adduser mynewuser

Now set the password for the new user:

passwd mynewuser

Step 2: Grant Root Privileges to the User

For a refresher on editing files with vim see: New User Tutorial: Overview of the Vim Text Editor

visudo

Find the following code:

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

In this case, we’re granting root privileges to the user mynewuser . Add the following below that code:

mynewuser ALL=(ALL) ALL

Then exit and save the file with the command :wq.

If you’ve followed the instruction above correctly, then you should now have a user setup by the name of mynewuser which can use sudo to run commands as root!