Ubuntu – How to make the sudo GUI work without the admin group

groupspermissionssudo

I have a group of users with sudo privileges. That group is not called admin. The users can use sudo on the command line without any problems, however, Unity GUI dialogs requesting root permission don't accept their login / password. They seem to additionally depend on a membership in the admin group.

How can I change this?

Best Answer

These applications are likely using Polkit, not sudo (or gksudo or a similar frontend), for authorization. The default rule on Ubuntu for Polkit uses membership in sudo or admin groups:

$ cat /etc/polkit-1/localauthority.conf.d/51-ubuntu-admin.conf 
[Configuration]
AdminIdentities=unix-group:sudo;unix-group:admin

Just create a new configuration file in /etc/polkit-1/localauthority.conf.d, say 60-local-admin.conf, containing:

[Configuration]
AdminIdentities=unix-group:<your-group>
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