AFAIK and this has how it has always been. If I use su, I've never used su -, my $HOME is /root and I have /sbin /usr/sbin added to my user's $PATH. You seem to be contradicting yourself. How? I was merely pointing out that /sbin /usr/sbin are added to $PATH in sudo su and su - you appeared to misrepresent this in your statement: "It does not alter HOME, SHELL, USER, LOGNAME, and PATH." First you agree with me, then you say the opposite.
Perhaps you'd perform a test for me.
1. bring up your system again from boot but in text mode not GUI mode.
2. Log in as a regular user.
3. Run the 'env' command ad save it to a file. /tmp/f1.txt
4. Now do the same, in turn, each of "su" and and "su -", each at the user level prompt. Files F2.txt for the 'su" and F3.txt for the "su -"
Do you get asked for the password for eah of "su" and "su -"? As user execute su and give required password, yes I'm asked for a
On 22/06/2017 13:28, Anton Aylward wrote: password going from user level to root level. If I'm logged in as root via su and I execute su - I'm not asked for a password because I'm already root.
Now do side-by-side "sdiff" (see the man page on this, and you might consider using "diff3") on each combination of the files.
I used diff -y but I should have used sort on the files created from env > myfile.txt before.
Please try reconciling that with what you find when you read the man page for "su".
I've never had use for su apart from just switching users, I use it every time I start my computer in konsole to have my first tab as root in the same directory as my last session, my rpmbuild directory. I've never been asked for a password by konsole and apart from setting white background with black text never touch the settings. I'm not even going to try to duplicate wol's problem by saving a profile after I've su'ed or su-'ed, my problem with konsole failing to start due to a non existent usb drive almost gave me a heart attack. Firefox, thunderbird, konsole, okular, kwrite and midnight commander are my most important applications and if something goes wrong konsole and mc are very important. I'm addicted to the mouse and selecting, scrolling and pasting.
Let me -- or rather the list - know what you observe and what you conclude.
I'm amazed that most of my environment is still there untouched. Still the only important difference I can find between su and su- is $USER
I'm particularly interested in the difference between f2.txt and f3.txt.
In the interests of full disclosure, here's mine; the differ3ence between "su" on the left and "su -" on the right. https://paste.opensuse.org/87356798
As you can see, the "su" keeps a lot of the 'anton' environment.
Exactly what I get.
Of course alot of this is affected by the setting in /etc/pam.d for "su" and "su-l", as well as polkit, /etc/ttydefs, /etc/login.defs, possibly someting in sysconfig, and almost certainly (in my case) changes to /etc/group.
it is also possible that TW is different, and that SLE has made LEAP change, but do check what you observe with the man page. If in fact the behaviour has changed, then the documentation needs changing.
I see there's a -p option to preserve the users environment, may be useful to me in the future. I don't see any contradictions in the man page.
This is what the docco/man page says:
First, it recommends:
It is recommended to always use the --login option (instead of its shortcut -) to avoid side effects caused by mixing environments.
and -l ? I'm going to try env at runlevel 1 out of interest after I've sent this reply. Dave P -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org