How to Add a User with Grant Root Privileges on CentOS 6.5

Pre-Flight Check

    These instructions are intended specifically for adding a user on CentOS 6.5.
    I’ll be working from a Liquid Web Core Managed CentOS 6.5 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 admin :

#adduser admin
Now set the password for the new user:

#passwd admin
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 admin . Add the following below that code:

admin 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 admin which can use sudo to run commands as root!