How to enable SSH access for non root users

Hi adelwhich,

You’ll need to create a user and add it to the sudoers group

You’ll start by creating a user called exampleuser using the adduser command while creating the user’s home directory

# useradd -m -d /home/exampleuser exampleuser

Once you’ve created the user, I’ll recommend setting a password. To do so execute:

# passwd exampleuser

Then use the usermod command to add the user to the sudo group

# usermod -aG sudo exampleuser

You can test if everything was done correctly by using the su command

# su -s /bin/bash username

You can also try and open a file somewhere. Maybe you can try and open a file in /etc just to see if you have permission to edit it.

$ sudo vi /etc/timezone

If you don’t see permission denied you are good to go.

There is something I like to point out. If you add your users to the sudoers group, they’ll have the power of a root user.

Now to allow SSH access to a certain user

Update on 10.07.2021 Initially, this answer contained information how to enable a user or a group to SSH however this has been outdated.

As such, I’ve updated the answer to providing information on how to configure your SSH keys on the user.

Now that you have the user-created, SSH to your Droplet using the root user and switch to the newly created one:

# su -s /bin/bash username

Once inside, go to your home folder with the cd command

$ cd

If you followed the whole answer this will bring you in the /home/exampleuser directory.

Now, you need to create the folder .ssh and an authorized_keys file, you can do it like that:

$ mkdir /home/exampleuser/.ssh                                                                                $ touch /home/exampleuser/.ssh/authorized_keys                                                                $ chmod 600 /home/exampleuser/.ssh/authorized_keys

All that is left to do is copy your SSH key in the authorized_keys file and you are good to go.

Kind regards, KFSys