Cannot add to sudoers file in Ubuntu

Question

1. vim /etc/group
2. Could not find "admin" group
3. adm:x:4:MYUSERNAME << added it here, because I assume this is "admin"
4. quit the vim editor...and tried it under my username...and it DOESNT WORK! 

Answer 1

The "adm" group is not the same as the "admin" group.

Also, you should never edit /etc/group by hand. If you mess something up, you can end up with a broken system.

The easiest command for adding someone to a group is like this:

gpasswd -a MYUSERNAME admin

If you're trying to give someone sudo-rights, can also just run visudo as root, and add a line like this to the file:

MYUSERNAME ALL=(ALL) ALL

If you want to give sudo-rights to everyone in the "adm" group, you can do something like this

%adm ALL=(ALL) ALL