[CentOS-docs] becoming root

Sun Apr 6 13:34:17 UTC 2008
Ned Slider <nedslider at f2s.com>

Alan Bartlett wrote:
> 
> As someone who was used to all users having the same search-path (I'm going
> back 25 or so years), when I first came across the use of a separate path
> for the super-user I asked the question "Why?". I have long since answered
> that question and support the concept. (An aside, can anyone tell me why one
> of the original grep flags, -y, was changed to -i ?)
> 
> Perhaps what also needs to be said is that "su <user>" gives the current
> user the identity of <user> whilst "su - <user>" gives the current user the
> identity of <user> *along with* <user>'s environment that would normally be
> obtained by logging in as <user>.
> 
> I probably haven't expressed the above very well. Looking in my old Unix
> System V manuals for the su command, I read "An initial - flag causes the
> environment to be changed to the one that would be expected if the user
> actually logged in again."
> 

Your explanation is fine, and probably better than mine :)

> Perhaps a mention of sudo and sudoers could also be made?
> 
> Alan.
> 

Good idea - I'll leave that for someone else to add once Ralph/someone 
gives me an indication where the page should sit.

Thanks for the feedback Alan :)