How to fix "'user' is not in sudoers" in CentOS

ObsidianBlade · February 2012

I just ran into this issue, and I'm sure I'm not going to be the last person to do so. This is my first tutorial, so I'm hoping I did everything the right way. It's a simple fix, so this is definitely one of the shortest how-to's ever.

First thing (for the way I do it) is to make sure you have nano. If not, log onto the root account and download nano before anything else:

sudo yum install nano

With that, it's time to edit the sudoers file to add yourself to it:

EDITOR=nano visudo

Now, navigate to the area where it says:

## Next comes the main part: which users can run what software on
## which machines (the sudoers file can be shared between multiple
## systems).
## Syntax:
##
##	user    MACHINE=COMMANDS
##
## The COMMANDS section may have other options added to it.
##
## Allow root to run any commands anywhere
root    ALL=(ALL)	ALL

## Allows members of the 'sys' group to run networking, software,
## service management apps and more.

And under where it says

root   ALL=(ALL)     ALL

place the name of the user that you want to give sudo rights to so that it looks something like this:

## Next comes the main part: which users can run what software on
## which machines (the sudoers file can be shared between multiple
## systems).
## Syntax:
##
##	user    MACHINE=COMMANDS
##
## The COMMANDS section may have other options added to it.
##
## Allow root to run any commands anywhere
root    ALL=(ALL)	ALL
Chris   ALL=(ALL)	ALL
## Allows members of the 'sys' group to run networking, software,
## service management apps and more.

ctrl-X to exit, y to agree to save it and enter to save the file with the name as it is and you're done!