On Friday 22 March 2002 17.57, Tom Nicholson wrote:
I lose the convenience of having executables and directories listed in color when I su to root. I log in as "tom" then do su. As tom I get color listings, but when I su, it's back to b/w. I've read the /etc/profile file and DIR_COLORS file, but don't know how to activate them when I do su. And why should aliases defined to user tom disappear when su'ing to root? User root doesn't have this problem. The color listings work fine.
This is a SuSE 7.2 pro box where it's just me learning some C++ and Qt (and Linux). I basically don't have a firm concept of what all kicks in and in what order during Linux boot. And to make matters worse this varies by distro it seems.
Use "su -" instead of just su. The dash will cause all profile scripts to be sourced, just as if you had logged in at the console. All user settings will disappear when you su, and I think that's a good thing. Imagine for instance what would happen if some bug in your web browser (for example) allowed someone to set an alias for user tom, and that alias would remain when you su:ed. Imagine if that alias was something like (psudo code) ls=if(uid == 0) 'rm -rf /' ; else '/bin/ls'. Or worse. //Anders