How to configure passwordless sudo in Linux

sudo allows a normal user to run commands which require administrative privilege. This works by a user running any of the commands via sudo. A user is then required to authenticate to the system before the command is executed.

sudo could be configured so that a select user or members of a select group does not need to enter their password to authenticate when running their commands via sudo. This could be done by configuring the sudoers file using the visudo tool at the terminal.

1. Launch your favorite terminal application.
2. Display current sudo privilege for your user.

   [email protected]:~$ sudo -l
   Matching Defaults entries for user on host:
       env_reset, mail_badpass,
       secure_path=/usr/local/sbin\:/usr/local/bin\:/usr/sbin\:/usr/bin\:/sbin\:/bin\:/snap/bin
   
   User user may run the following commands on host:
       (ALL : ALL) ALL

3. Open sudoers file using visudo.

   $ sudo visudo

4. Add ALL = (ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL line to your username (or for any other user) so your user could run all commands without password

   user       ALL = (ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

   Passwordless sudo could be assigned to a group by replacing the username with %groupname or by replacing it with ALL to allow passwordless sudo for all users in the system

5. Exit visudo by saving the file.
6. Check sudo privilege for your user again to confirm changes are successful.

   [email protected]:~$ sudo -l
   Matching Defaults entries for user on host:
       env_reset, mail_badpass,
       secure_path=/usr/local/sbin\:/usr/local/bin\:/usr/sbin\:/usr/bin\:/sbin\:/bin\:/snap/bin
   
   User user may run the following commands on host:
       (ALL : ALL) ALL
       (ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

7. Try running commands using sudo and no password should be prompted.

   [email protected]:~$ sudo ls -la /root
   total 32
   drwx------  5 root root 4096 Jul 24 05:54 .
   drwxr-xr-x 19 root root 4096 Jul 24 05:53 ..
   -rw-------  1 root root   18 Jul 19 01:57 .bash_history
   -rw-r--r--  1 root root 3106 Aug  6  2018 .bashrc
   drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 Jul 24 05:54 .local
   -rw-r--r--  1 root root  148 Aug  6  2018 .profile
   drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 Apr 22 07:56 snap
   drwx------  2 root root 4096 Apr 22 07:56 .ssh