[ubuntu-uk] Creating 'root' account.

[Neil Greenwood]

On 04/08/07, Tony Arnold <tony.arnold at manchester.ac.uk> wrote:
> (On a technical front, the user name has to be a member of the admin
> group to be able to use sudo. Also, by editing /etc/sudoers you can
> control exactly which commands users can execute. For example, if you
> wanted to let your kids shut the machine down, you could arrange that
> without letting them do anything else.).

Just wanted to point out that you shouldn't edit /etc/sudoers
directly, but should use the visudo command to do it. It syntax-checks
the file you've edited before replacing the old /etc/sudoers, so sudo
won't break if you make a mistake.

This is especially useful since you'll need to use sudo to edit the
/etc/sudoers file (or use visudo).

It's also worth pointing out that, unlike the implication in the name,
it won't necessarily use vi to edit the file, but will respect your
EDITOR env. variable setting.

HTH
Hwyl,
Neil.