Username is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported

Question

I am running Ubuntu 12.04 on my laptop using VMware Player. I am not sure why but I have an account called "User Account" in addition to my account that I usually login to use Ubuntu. Well that was just a side comment but basically all I am trying to do is install the ncurses library on Ubuntu. I have tried installing ncurses using the following command lines:

sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev
sudo apt-get install ncurses-dev

When I tried installing ncurses twice using the above commands I received the following prompt in the terminal:

[sudo] password for username

When I type in my password I receive the following message:

username is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.

So far I have tried enabling the root user ("Super User") account by following these instructions.

Here are some of the things the link suggested to do:

Allow an other user to run sudo. Type the following in the command line:

sudo adduser username sudo

Or

sudo adduser username sudo

logging in as another user. Type the following in the command line:

sudo -i -u username

Enabling the root account. Type the following in the command line:

sudo -i

Or

sudo passwd root

I have tried all of the above command lines and after typing in each command I was prompted for my password. After I entered my password I received the same message as when I tried to install ncurses:

fsolano is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.

Answer 1

When this happened to me all I had to do to fix it was:

Step 1. Open a terminal window, CTRL+ALT+T on my system (Debian KDE after setting up as hotkey)

Step 2. Entered root using command su root

Step 3. Input root password

Step 4. Input command apt-get install sudo -y to install sudo

Step 5. Add user to sudoers file by inputting adduser username sudo, put your username in place of username

Step 6. Set the correct permissions for sudoers file by inputting chmod 0440 /etc/sudoers

Step 7. Type exit and hit Enter until you close your terminal window. Shutdown your system completely and reboot.

Step 8. Open another terminal window.

Step 9. Try any sudo command to check if your username is correctly added to sudoers file. I used sudo echo "Hello World!". If your username has been correctly added to the sudoers list then you will get Hello World! as the terminal response!

Answer 2

Follow the link to reset your admin password [sounds like you named your admin user account as user :)]

• How do I reset a lost administrative password?

After that, login as the admin user and execute the following.

sudo usermod -aG sudo,adm fsolano

Now you can login as fsolano and you should be able to run sudo command.

If you get bash: usermod: command not found even as root, try:

/sbin/usermod -aG sudo,adm fsolano

Answer 3

I am having the same issue with Kali anytime I want to add newuser to the sudo group by typing this command:

usermod -aG sudo newuser

and editing the right section in /etc/sudoers. All crap!

My fix for this nonsense is to copy the line for root below it and changing root to newuser:

# User privilege specification
root    ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

newuser ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

I remember the usual method with usermod used to work but is it a bug for the last couple of years now? it's really nonsense. anyway, if someone has a better answer, share it please:)

Answer 4

The config file /etc/sudoers list, who is allowed to run which commands as which user.

On ubuntu this file contains a line allowing all users of the sudo group to run commands as the root user.

To check which users are in the sudo group you can type getent group sudo. You can also check the groups of your current user by typing id.

Probably your current user is not in the sudo group and is therefore not allowed to use the sudo command.

Log in as some sudo enabled user if you want to run sudo.

Answer 5

Follow the instructions to reset the password for your admin user:

• Lost Password?

Then you'll be able to grant sudo permission to your regular user with

sudo adduser username sudo

as you posted in your original question.

By the way: why are you installing ncurses? Are you compiling something?

Answer 6

You can also add a user to sudo group for all access right by:

1. Going to your root directory user by sudo su (ubuntu 16.04 LTS)
2. Then enter your current user password
3. type sudo adduser <username> sudo where username is the name of the user you want to add in the sudoers list
4. For checking if your required user is added succesfully type getent group sudo which will show the list of sudo users

Answer 7

If you have any other root/admin user than 'fsolano', that is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported:

check sudo enabled users (groups)
# getent group sudo 
sudo:x:27:xyz,abc 

since the user 'fsolano' is changed to standard user and if you have any other root privileged user, login via the root one and change 'fsolano' to administrator using "User Accounts".

Answer 8

Try the following command

su root -l -c "echo 'ismail ALL=(ALL)  ALL' >> /etc/sudoers"

However, I found a better solution.

su root -l -c "adduser ismail sudo"

replace ismail with your user name.

You have to restart the machine after running this command.

Answer 9

The simplest way to add an user to sudoers file is run the command bellow as user with permission to execute gpasswd:

sudo gpasswd -a username sudo

Answer 10

1.You can check whether you are a part of sudo group or not by using below command

groups username ===> it will lists the groups for which he belongs too

We can check by below script too

h=`groups username| awk -F ":" '{print $2}'| grep -io 'sudo'`
if [[ $h == "sudo" ]]
then
echo "user praveen is part of group sudo"
else
echo "Need to add user to group sudo"
echo "Swictch to root and add user"
fi