User guide

Administrative Controls
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Figure 2.2. Adding users to the "wheel" group.
Open the PAM configuration file for su (/etc/pam.d/su) in a text editor and remove the comment #
from the following line:
auth required /lib/security/$ISA/pam_wheel.so use_uid
This change means that only members of the administrative group wheel can use this program.
Note
The root user is part of the wheel group by default.
2.1.4.3.2. The sudo Command
The sudo command offers another approach to giving users administrative access. When trusted
users precede an administrative command with sudo, they are prompted for their own password.
Then, when they have been authenticated and assuming that the command is permitted, the
administrative command is executed as if they were the root user.
The basic format of the sudo command is as follows:
sudo <command>
In the above example, <command> would be replaced by a command normally reserved for the root
user, such as mount.