On Wed, 2009-04-08 at 15:21 +0100, Alan Cox wrote: > > I was at BTL in the very early '80s. Writing kernel mods and drivers > > for Unix, and teaching Unix internals to BTL employees. It's always been > > "superuser". I don't know where anyone got this lame "substitute user" > > stuff, but it's not authentic. > > To quote the V7 manual page > > -su \- substitute user id temporarily > > > So although a lot of people believe su is superuser, they are wrong.
As I said already, 'su' *was* 'superuser', but it changed. My first Unix system was 5th Edition, circa 1975, and I definitely remember it this way. In fact that version of 'su' didn't even take an argument. I can't find a 5th Edition manual on line, but the screenshot below is from su(8) in the 6th Edition and corroborates what I'm saying. Cheers poc
<<attachment: su-v6.png>>
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