Why is my new user being asked for a sudo password?

Question

I'm running Ubuntu 11.10. I'm trying to setup a user that's essentially a clone of the permissions of the ubuntu user. This works but I'm not able to sudo with this new user without supplying a password (which I don't even have for this user). How can I set it up to work the same way as the ubuntu user?

Here's what I did (I'm doing this over SSH by the way):

I created a new user with:

sudo useradd -d /home/ryan -m ryan

Then I added this user to the admin group with:

sudo usermod -a -G admin ryan

Then I cloned the ssh keys that are setup for the ubuntu user over to this new user:

sudo mkdir /home/ryan/.ssh
sudo chown ryan:ryan /home/ryan/.ssh
sudo cp /home/ubuntu/.ssh/authorized_keys /home/ryan/.ssh
sudo chown ryan:ryan /home/ryan/.ssh/authorized_keys

I then was able to ssh to the machine as ryan using the key to authenticate me. But when I try to do a sudo commend I get prompted for a password:

ryan@machine:~$ sudo /etc/passwd
[sudo] password for ryan: 

How can I bypass this? Basically I want it to work like the ubuntu user...

Answer 1

The "ubuntu" user on a live CD is configured with a blank (empty) password. Once you have installed ubuntu you will want to then configure sudo.

Please note that many people, myself included, consider making this change to be a security risk (see the rootsudo page for details)

use sudoers to make the chages

sudo visudo

Add in a line at the bottom of the file,

ryan ALL=NOPASSWD: ALL

See Ubuntu wiki rootsudo and man sudoersfor details.

As an alternate, especially over ssh, I simply open a root shell

sudo -i

Yes I still have to enter a root password, but only once. This maintains both security and convenience.

When working over ssh, you might also be interested in screen ;)