adding user to wheel group

tied2 · 02-13-2003, 12:17 AM

HI, I installed freebsd 5.0 and I made a mistake at install, well ok I made a lot of mistakes but have sorted thru most of them. One thing I'm having trouble with is how to add my user account to the wheel group so i can become su. I tried /stand/sysinstall but couldn't see a option to edit user accounts only create new ones. Can someone help me out here?

Thanks!

ferreter · 02-13-2003, 01:17 AM

The easiest way in my experience is to simply open /etc/group with vi, nano, or emacs and just add the user to the wheel group like so:

wheel::10:root,username

toodles!

tied2 · 02-13-2003, 01:35 AM

thanks ! I tryed that but I had done:

wheel:*:1:root:username
a misstake!
thanks again!

ferreter · 02-13-2003, 01:49 AM

Not a problem, i think I may have made that mistake in the past once as well..hehe..

php · 03-12-2003, 12:20 PM

or when you add a new user if to be added to any groups besides theirs, you put wheel

trebek · 09-22-2007, 07:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ferreter

The easiest way in my experience is to simply open /etc/group with vi, nano, or emacs and just add the user to the wheel group like so:

wheel::10:root,username

toodles!

I added this line to /etc/group and that didn't do it. Perhaps there's some other way? Or do i need to remove the other line for my users name?

I am using the dreaded gnome (about to get rid of it) on debian.

phil.d.g · 09-23-2007, 02:28 AM

You need to logout and then log back in.

trebek · 09-24-2007, 02:14 AM

I logged out of the session after adding that line, and still doesn't work.

I noticed that there is a , instead of a : there on the original post. Is this so or is it a typo?

anomie · 09-24-2007, 08:52 AM

It needs to look like:

Code:

wheel:*:0:root,user_here

trebek · 09-26-2007, 05:16 AM

Hey, i'm back.

I reinstalled kubuntu and upgraded from dapper to edgy. Amazingly, in edgy, sudo works fine. I not only able to type sudo, but it asks me for the password again, before executing the command, and of course, it asks me again if i close the shell or if i've been idle for a while.

Don't know what's the difference here. I'll have a look at the sudoers and group files in /etc/ to see what i can find.

Thanks a lot guys, i ended up knowing much more than i used to be, so thanks again, you guys rule!

saivinob · 09-28-2007, 04:22 AM

Hi,
the discussion was about getting su ability in FreeBSD but turned to Kubuntu?
Anyway even I wanted this facility so added my name to wheel line in /etc/group as root and then logged out and logged back as normal user(the user name I added to wheel line). Now I can use the su facility.
Thanks anomie and phil.