The visudo command is used on Linux systems to edit the /etc/sudoers file; this ensures that there are no errors before the changes are written to the actual file. As you can see below; I have added my user homer to the sudoers file. This allows me to run commands with sudo; but will still ask for my users password before running the command.
# # This file MUST be edited with the 'visudo' command as root. # # Please consider adding local content in /etc/sudoers.d/ instead of # directly modifying this file. # # See the man page for details on how to write a sudoers file. # Defaults env_reset Defaults mail_badpass Defaults secure_path="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin" # Host alias specification # User alias specification # Cmnd alias specification # User privilege specification root ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL # Allow members of group sudo to execute any command %sudo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL homer ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL # See sudoers(5) for more information on "#include" directives: #includedir /etc/sudoers.d |
This is how you enable the sudo command for the normal user on Debian GNU/Linux 7.0. This is not very difficult at all; just make sure you NEVER edit the /etc/sudoers file with any other editor. Use the visudo command.