Bob S said the following on 08/31/2010 01:53 AM:
Now, you need to explain to me why "su" will not work while "su -" will. As far as I can see "su -" only drops you down into the very lowest primary directory as a "cd /" would. (which I always do before any command I make as the root user)
Well the manual says `-' `-l' `--login' Make the shell a login shell. This means the following. Unset all environment variables except `TERM', `HOME', and `SHELL' (which are set as described above), and `USER' and `LOGNAME' (which are set, even for the super-user, as described above), and set `PATH' to a compiled-in default value. Change to USER's home directory. Prepend `-' to the shell's name, intended to make it read its login startup file(s). Which is a bit different from just a "cd /; su" Creating an "as if" login context is a very different thing. And as we all know ... Context is Everything The context of a "su" and "su -" are very, very different. This is not hard to determine by observation. :-) Let's not forget that in order for GUI applications to work, they need to know the "screen" from the environment - the "context". Something like DISPLAY=:0 or DISPLAY=remotehost:11.0 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org