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When administering a server, there may be some users who need limited root functionality to access certain, but not all, root functions.

sudo (superuser do) allows you to configure non-root users to run root level commands without being root.  Access can be given by the root level administrator through configuration of the /etc/sudoers file.  Please note that making changes directly to the /etc/sudoers file is discouraged, and that the visudo utility should be used.

The syntax for using sudo is fairly simple, you specify the name of the command preceded by 'sudo'.  For example, if a user needed to run /sbin/chown, you could run it with the command:
 
Which would then prompt you for the root password and then run the command.  You can configure sudo to allow access to files by using the root password, the user's own password, or with no password.

Configuring who's password to use

Here is how to configure each:

1.  For non-root user access by entering the root password:
 
2.  For non-root user access by entering their own password:
           
3.  For non-root user access by entering no password:
   
Setting up permissions for non-root users

Now that you know how to change what password to use (or not to use), let's move on to permissions.

In the "User privilege specification" section, you can set privileges at the user or group levels.  Here is what it looks like by default:
 
To give privileges to users, add users to the area under the "User privilege specification".  As an example, to give a user named Joe privileges to run chown, you would add the following entry:
  Using this syntax, all options for chown will be available to Joe.  If you want to limit what parameters can be used by Joe, list them in the entry like this:
 
Notice that there are three separate entries.  One that allows -R, one for -V, and one for -R-V.  sudo allows will only allow multiple parameters if you add them specifically (and only in the order that you specify), thus the -R-V in addition to the individual parameter listings.

You can also allow some commands to be used with no password while others require a password.  Here is an example:
 
With the above configuration, the /bin/chown -R command will not require a password, /bin/chown -V and /bin/chown -R-V will require a password to run, but they will be allowed.

The same thing can be done for user groups, you just need to put it in the following syntax:
 
You just need to specify the group name with a % in front of it.  The same syntax for users applies to groups.