On Sun, Jun 10, 2001 at 10:25:23PM -0700, Mark Wagnon wrote: :I've never used sudo. Whenever I need to do something as root, I use :su. What's the difference? Is one better/more secure than the other?
I find that if I use "su" for an X application I need to meddle with my display security (xhost +localhost or somesuch), where as "sudo" does the right thing. sudo is more secure in a multi-administrator setting. It logs usage so you can see who issued what command as whom. You can tune permissions so that certain users or groups are allow or dissallowed commands. And it's revocable, you never have to give out the reall root password (users authenticate with their regular password), so if you need to revoke privilege you don't need to change the root password, also people cant leave the root password taped to the monitor, because they don't know it. -Jon