Thanks Scott for the update on Fedora. You have always been helpful in that. I think that Fedora still uses su - in preference to su and that some limitations still exist. I have run across it with F12 and F14 and the gurus there still advocate su - for full admin privileges. As for me, I install sudo in Fedora and it works, although not as well as in Ubuntu. Some habits die hard. :) I had a very hard time adapting to sudo and now it is just second nature.
Many people think that su means superuser. It is a difficult distortion to kill, it seems. As you say, you can su as any user. All of this only shows how complicated Linux is for newbies to get a handle on. Roy Using Kubuntu 10.10, 64-bit Location: Canada On 20 February 2011 20:23, Scott <[email protected]> wrote: > > > 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. > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ 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/
