Setup no password sudo on RHEL

Sudo is a great tool if you want to run programs with elevated permissions. The problem is that by default you have to enter a password to run the commands. In this post I show you how to set up sudo in RHEL 5, so select users don't need to enter a password.





Open your favorite text editor and edit /etc/sudoers. Change the following lines to match what is below.
visudo
## Allows people in group wheel to run all commands
%wheel ALL=(ALL)  ALL

## Same thing without a password
%wheel ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
Note - I found that you have to uncomment both of the items above, if you are using a gnome desktop. When only the bottom option is set, the the gnome admin apps will not launching, even after you enter the root password in the pop-up. So if you are not using the admin GUI apps then just uncomment the bottom.

Next add the user to the wheel group.
usermod -G wheel  user
The -G option adds the user to the wheel group. If you use -g instead the sysadmin group will be added as the primary group.

Now your user should be able to use sudo without having to use a password.

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Use sudo without a password