How to Add a New User and Sudo Privileges on Alpine Linux 3.22

This tutorial takes about 5 minutes to complete.

Before you start

Alpine Linux doesn't ship with sudo installed. It gives you root and expects you to add what you need — which is exactly what trips up a lot of people coming from Ubuntu or Debian, where sudo is there from the first login. This tutorial fixes that: it installs sudo, then creates a new user and gives that user sudo access, which is the more common real-world setup. You'll do the initial work as root, then reboot and confirm the new user can actually use sudo.

Step 1: Log in as root

Open a terminal and switch to the root user:

su -

Enter the root password when prompted. If you're already logged in as root, you can skip this step.

Step 2: Update the package index

Before installing anything, refresh the list of available packages. Alpine uses apk — the Alpine Package Keeper:

apk update

This refreshes the local index of available packages from the configured repositories.

Step 3: Install sudo

Now install the sudo package:

apk add sudo

apk add sudo installs the package plus any dependencies it needs.

Step 4: Verify sudo is installed

Confirm the install worked and check the version:

sudo --version

If it prints a sudo version string, the install succeeded.

Step 5: Add a new user

Create the user you want to grant sudo access to. This example uses test — substitute your own username:

adduser test

You'll be prompted to set a password and confirm it. Once that's done, the user exists on the system.

Step 6: Enable the wheel group in sudoers

Alpine's default /etc/sudoers has the wheel-group rule commented out. You need to uncomment it so that members of the wheel group can run sudo.

Alpine 3.22 doesn't include nano by default, so visudo opens the file in vi:

visudo

Scroll down until you find this line:

#%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

Remove the leading # so the line reads:

%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

Then save and exit: press Shift + :, type wq, and hit Enter.

Step 7: Add the user to the wheel group

Uncommenting the line only defines the rule — it doesn't put anyone in the group yet. Add your user to wheel:

adduser test wheel

This is the step that actually grants the permission, since sudoers now says anyone in the wheel group can run sudo. Confirm the membership:

groups test

The output should list wheel among the user's groups.

Step 8: Reboot and log in as the new user

Reboot the system so the new user is available at the login screen:

reboot

After it comes back, select the new user (test) at the login prompt and enter its password. Open a terminal.

Step 9: Install and verify nano

Now that you're logged in as the new user, you're no longer root — so privileged commands need sudo. This is the moment you find out whether the setup actually works. Update the package index:

sudo apk update

Install the nano editor:

sudo apk add nano

Confirm it installed:

nano --version

If it prints a nano version string, the new user's sudo access is working.

Step 10: Create a test file

Do a quick end-to-end check. Create a file:

nano test.txt

Type hello world, then save and exit: press Ctrl-X, type Y, and hit Enter. Read the file back:

cat test.txt

You should see Hello World.

That's it — you've added a new user, granted it sudo privileges, and confirmed it works by installing and using nano as that user.