Promote a user to Roots level

[itdweeb999]

I have an account that I need to promote to the same permissions, access levels etc that ROOT has (for testing purposes). Can anyone give me the procedure on how to do this. I am very unfamiliar with Linux.

[techieMoe]

To the best of my knowledge, there can only be one root user (or user with root privileges) in the Linux permissions hierarchy. You should be able to give them close to the same privileges, but not full-fledged root.

You could add the user to the "sudoers" group and let them run with root privileges temporarily by using the sudo command and their regular user password.

[itdweeb999]

So I would just type the following command "sudo [user] [password]"

[techieMoe]

So I would just type the following command "sudo [user] [password]"

Close, but I think the command is something like sudo adduser username admin. See the tutorials below for confirmation.

http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/w...Users_and_Sudo
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=162867

The user you're giving privileges would type something like this when they wanted to run a command with temporary root privileges. Say they wanted to install something using apt-get:

sudo apt-get install foo
Password: <user enters their password>

And the command runs.

[bigtomrodney]

If you are giving someone root access, you are giving them root. There is no way around this and it is a bad idea unless you are running system maintenence - In which case you would simply use root anyway. If a user needs to do something they do not have permission for then you should grant them that permission alone.

This has always been the way in Unix and you will find Windows admins are coming around more to this. Traditionally the task has been to close off access in response to threats but a more appropriate and easier method is to remove all access and simply grant what is required.