This is most likely to happen on a normal GUI system like Ubuntu or Linux Mint. If you or the user is meant to have sudo / root privileges it is as simple as editing the following files: Now assume your username is "iamtheuser" vi /etc/group adm:x:4:syslog,iamtheuser sudo:x:27:anotheruser,iamtheuser Find the above lines and add a comma and "ia........