How to Add a User and Grant Root Privileges on Fedora 21

Posted on December 22, 2014 by J. Mays

Category: Tutorials | Tags: Adduser, CLI, Command-line, Fedora, Fedora 21, Linux, Root, Sudo, User, Visudo

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Note:

Please note that this article is considered legacy documentation because this OS has reached its end-of-life support.

Pre-Flight Check

These instructions are intended specifically for adding a user on Fedora 21.
I’ll be working from a Liquid Web Self Managed Fedora 21 server, and I’ll be logged in as root.

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 anywhere root 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!

About the Author: J. Mays

As a previous contributor, JMays shares his insight with our Knowledge Base center. In our Knowledge Base, you'll be able to find how-to articles on Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora and much more!