Fedora- redhat Linux

[Paul Howarth]

Duncan Lithgow wrote:
> The important tip that I didn't get for ages was using typing
> # su -
> 1. '#' means 'you're logged in as a user'
> 2. '$' means 'you're logged in as root'
> 3. If you've logged in as a user and need to make something work as 
> root. You can right click and get a terminal, then you can change to 
> any user by typing sy <user-name> you'll then be prompted for password.

That's "su <user-name>" (or "su - <user-name>"), not "sy <user-name>"; 
watch out for typos when giving advice to newbies who might not spot them...

> 4. If you type
> # su -
> it will ask you for your root password and behave as if you'd loged in 
> as root. I don't understand why but it works better than
> # su root

It works better because (as is hinted at in "man su"), using the "-" 
parameter makes su run as a login shell, which will correctly set up 
root's environment (which includes /sbin and /usr/sbin, two directories 
full of useful admin tools, in the PATH variable). Not using the "-" 
parameter means that su does not run as a login shell and hence doesn't 
set up root's environment, so amongst other things, the /sbin and 
/usr/sbin directories don't get put in the PATH variable.

Paul.