Create new user and copy the privilages

Relja · 10-09-2006, 03:56 PM

Hello,

My friend has administrative rights on a server running Ubuntu and I often login using his account. But we would like to create a new user account for me that would be identical to the one that already exists (ie to have all the same privilages). How can I do this?
I am logging in using putty, so I only have the command line available.

Thank you very much
Relja
P.S. I am quite new to linux. Had a bit of experience with it since I used if for 2/3 years, but I know only very basic stuff..

pljvaldez · 10-09-2006, 04:30 PM

I would say to just make sure your user belongs to all the same groups that he does (including his username group). That should fix most of it, I believe.

Relja · 10-09-2006, 06:21 PM

Thanks for the answer - but I probably wasn't clear enough.
I don't really know how to create a user, how to make him belong to some groups etc.. So if someone could write the relevant commands so that I can maybe explore a bit more about them on google or something.
Thanks

pljvaldez · 10-09-2006, 07:52 PM

First, as your friend's user, type groups and write down all the groups he belongs to (like adm, floppy, cdrom, users, etc). Then type

Code:

sudo useradd -G adm,disk,dialout,cdrom,floppy,audio newusername

This should add a new user with login newusername and a home directory, etc, etc. The -G switch is followed by the list of groups you copied down, these are the supplemental groups you want to belong to.

Relja · 10-09-2006, 08:12 PM

Thanks very much. I found out which groups does my friend belong to (by typing in groups). Then I did the sudo command, and it got executed without any errors/warnings.. But then (after searching a bit more on the useradd command) I tried

Code:

passwd newusername

But that gives an error that the user doesn't exist? The same error appears if I try

Code:

groups newusername

Thanks

pljvaldez · 10-09-2006, 08:40 PM

Did you do sudo passwd newusername?

Also, you'll need to add your newusername to the sudoers file. As your friends user type sudo visudo then edit the file so that a similar line occurs to your friends (just change the username).

Relja · 10-10-2006, 04:43 AM

Now I get the permission denied error, which probably means that my friend's account doesn't have root privilages as we originally tought. Thank you very much for all the help and I think that it will all be working once we contact the real administrator..