On Sun, Feb 20, 2011 at 07:27:38PM -0500, Roy wrote:
> as root or changing to root temporarily. I believe that su actually means > substitute user and not switch user as previously said. Heh, maybe means super user, though I doubt it, as you can actually su to any user. Then there is Fedora > which has su and su -. If you run as su then you cannot affect system wide > changes. For that you need su - which means su - root. In many distros then > su is understood as root, but the su - is the traditional Unix way. You can > actually type su - bob to run as user bob. Then there is gksu and kdesu. It > all makes for an interesting experience. This has actually changed, around F10 or so. Fedora used to have root (in root's environment), have access to /sbin, /usr/sbin, and /usr/local/sbin (I think), while regular users only had /bin, /usr/local/bin, $HOME/bin and the like. However, it's now changed so that all users have, by default, the /sbin directories in their path. There are still some environment variables that you might only get if you do su -. The space dash, as the man page says, gives you the log in environment. So, if I do su, I'm still in my own home directory--if I do su -, I'm in root's home directory. Both OSX and Ubuntu, as well as other Linux distributions that use sudo by default without creating a root user, will allow you to do sudo su or sudo su -, thereby becoming root without having root's password. (If you Fedora, the BSDs, or anything else that can use sudo, even if they don't by default, that is, anything with a root account created, the same thing applies.) Some of the more traditional Unixes, for example AIX, still only give /sbin as a path to the root user. -- Scott Robbins PGP keyID EB3467D6 ( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 ) gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6 Xander: Well, I guess that makes it official. Everybody's paired off. Vampires get dates. Hell, even the school librarian sees more action than me. ------------------------------------ To unsubscribe from this list, please email [email protected] & you will be removed.Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LINUX_Newbies/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LINUX_Newbies/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
