Big-Cloud Servers (Non-root Users) Guide

What This Is About

For security, big cloud providers such as Tencent Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, and Huawei Cloud disable root login by default and only allow login with a regular user (Ubuntu uses ubuntu, Debian uses admin, CentOS uses centos). These regular users are usually in the sudo group and are configured with passwordless sudo by default (i.e. running sudo does not require a password).

What This Means for the Panel

When you log in with a regular user, every operation in the panel that "requires administrator privileges" — mirror source switching, installing Docker, installing software, configuring the firewall, etc. — is automatically prefixed with sudo by the panel to elevate privileges. You don't need any extra configuration; just use it normally.

How the Panel Handles This Automatically

The panel has a built-in smart privilege-elevation mechanism that automatically detects and handles:

1. Identify the current user: after connecting, it automatically determines whether you logged in as root or a regular user.

2. Probe for passwordless sudo: for a regular user, it automatically probes whether passwordless sudo is supported (the result is cached and not re-probed repeatedly).

3. Auto-elevate: for "operation commands that require root" (apt-get install, yum/dnf install, systemctl, writing to /etc/, nginx -s reload, applying for certificates, etc.), it automatically prefixes them with sudo -n sh -c '...'.

4. Read-only commands are left alone: commands like cat, whoami, pwd, command -v — inspection/detection commands — are not prefixed with sudo and run as-is.

5. Zero impact for root: when logged in as root, commands return as-is with completely unchanged behavior.

How to Fill In When Adding a Server

Field	Recommended Value
Username	The regular username, e.g. `ubuntu` / `centos` / `admin`
Auth method	Password or private key (big clouds usually provide a key pair by default; a private key is recommended)

The panel completes the subsequent privilege elevation automatically; you don't need to manually prepend sudo.

When It Fails

Passwordless sudo is a prerequisite. If the server is configured to "require a password for sudo", the panel cannot auto-elevate and returns a clear message: "Please log in as root, or configure passwordless sudo" — it will not fail silently or falsely report success.

If you want to enable passwordless sudo for a regular user, run the following on the server:

# Add the current user to the sudo group (if not already added)
sudo usermod -aG sudo <username>
# Configure passwordless sudo (edit sudoers)
echo "<username> ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL" | sudo tee /etc/sudoers.d/<username>

Notes

1. Big-cloud default users (ubuntu / centos / admin) all have passwordless sudo and can be used directly.

2. If you're not sure what user your server has, log in and run whoami to see the current username.

3. The panel's elevation applies only to "operation commands"; viewing and monitoring features are unaffected.