Whenever I try to install a program I get a password authentication prompt asking me to punch in my password. I would like to know how to disable this.

I tried to google it and most of the stuff I find related to the login password, which isn't an issue for me as I disabled it at startup.

What I need to get rid of is the password prompt for installing and uninstalling stuff.

5

5 Answers

sudo nano -w /etc/sudoers

(and enter your password one last time). Then use the editor to change the line that says:

%sudo ALL=(ALL) ALL

into:

%sudo ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL

or even:

%sudo ALL=(ALL:ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL

(to allow assuming any group as well as any user).

12

Type sudo visudo and this screen appears:

#
# This file MUST be edited with the 'visudo' command as root.
#
# Please consider adding local content in /etc/sudoers.d/ instead of
# directly modifying this file.
#
# See the man page for details on how to write a sudoers file.
#
Defaults env_reset, timestamp_timeout=120
Defaults mail_badpass
Defaults secure_path="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:$
# Host alias specification
# User alias specification
# Cmnd alias specification
# User privilege specification

The first command Defaults env_reset, timestamp_timeout=120 has been modified with a timeout of 120 minutes between having to enter sudo password. The normal default is 5 minutes. Although you can change this to a very large number you will still have to enter it once per boot.

1

sudo nano -w /etc/sudoers

add NOPASSWD entry for your user:

yourusername ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

The password is required because it's using sudo to run the actual installation as root. You may be able to address this by modifying /etc/sudoers to allow it to run apt-get and dpkg without a password (see or this post Run apt-get without sudo).

1

By default ubuntu logs you in as a non root user for the O/S safety. It's there for a reason so that anybody who is new cannot mess up with the O/S itself accidently. In case you don't want to be prompted for password there is another way

sudo su

now you are root. But be very careful in terms of anything you are doing.

1

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