On Tue, Sep 19, 2000 at 07:38:56AM -0700, Charles Hixson wrote:
> It partially depends on just what your purpose is in switching users. The
> easiest way is to su to the new id. I'm not really up on Linux, but on
> System V all one needed to do was:
> > su newUser
> password:
>
> and from then on, any commands that one issued would be with the permissions
> and id of newUser. If one does this at a text prompt, and then startx's,
> then one activates X window with the permissions of newUser.
> The drawback of this approach is that the startup script of newUser isn't
> executed, and the environment variables aren't reset, though you can execute
> it by hand. This is also the main advantage of the method.
To execute the startup scripts, like ~/.bash_profile, use:
su - newuser
>
> FWIW, this is basically what the su command normally does, but if you don't
> specify the name of the newUser, then it assumes that you mean root.
>
> P.S.: I've done a partial test of this, and have found out that if you are
> in as root, that it will not ask you for the password of newUser. But it
> does restrict the rights as described above. I haven't tested going from
> one normal user to another, however.
Going from one user to another, su will require a password. I suspect that
the authors thought that asking root for a password was irrelevant, since
root has far more power ($DEITY privilges) than the user you would become.
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