[GRLUG] root on Fedora 15

[Nick Sinclair]

I always thought "su - " loads the root profile/environment, while "su" just
escalates privileges?



On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 3:33 PM, Bob Kline <bob.kline at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 3:20 PM, Eric Beversluis <
> ebever at researchintegration.org> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 2011-09-22 at 15:12 -0400, Bob Kline wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 2:58 PM, Kyle <dontwantspam1 at earthlink.net>
>> > wrote:
>> >         -----Original Message-----
>> >         >From: Eric Beversluis <ebever at researchintegration.org>
>> >         >Sent: Sep 22, 2011 2:48 PM
>> >         >To: grlug at grlug.org
>> >         >Subject: [GRLUG] root on Fedora 15
>> >         >
>> >         >Well after all my trials with getting my new Lenovo x120e
>> >         running I've
>> >         >ended up with Fedora 15, which seems to be working nicely.
>> >         >
>> >         >One problem tho: I'm used to opening gedit from the command
>> >         line root
>> >         >prompt so I can edit root-permission files (don't use vi
>> >         often enough to
>> >         >remember the commands). But Fedora 15 won't let me do that.
>> >         >
>> >         >"
>> >         >[root at localhost eric]# gedit
>> >         >
>> >         >(gedit:20435): EggSMClient-WARNING **: Failed to connect to
>> >         the session
>> >         >manager: None of the authentication protocols specified are
>> >         supported
>> >         >
>> >         >g_dbus_connection_real_closed: Remote peer vanished with
>> >         error:
>> >         >Underlying GIOStream returned 0 bytes on an async read
>> >         >(g-io-error-quark, 0). Exiting.
>> >         >Terminated
>> >         >"
>> >         >
>> >         >No problem, I thought. I'll just log in as root. But Fedora
>> >         15 won't let
>> >         >me do that either. I keep getting "authentication failed"
>> >         when I try to
>> >         >do that.
>> >         >
>> >         >So what's a guy to do? In the time I lost figuring this all
>> >         out I could
>> >         >have dug out a vi cheat sheet and done what I needed to do.
>> >         But I don't
>> >         >want to do that each time I need to edit a root-owned
>> >         document.
>> >         >
>> >         >Thanks.
>> >         >
>> >         >
>> >
>> >         >--
>> >         >This message has been scanned for viruses and
>> >         >dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
>> >         >believed to be clean.
>> >         >
>> >         >_______________________________________________
>> >         >grlug mailing list
>> >         >grlug at grlug.org
>> >         >http://shinobu.grlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/grlug
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >         Try "su -" instead of "sudo su".
>> >
>> >         - Kyle
>> >
>> >
>> > What does that do?
>> >
>> >
>> >    -- Bob
>>
>> That seems to have worked. (Use su - to switch to root and then call
>> 'gedit'. Some subtle diff between 'su' and 'su -', but I don't remember
>> what it is.
>>
>
> Curious.  The "su" man page suggests
> that running su is not same as logging in
> as root directly, but that "su -"  is.
>
> "su" gives you root privileges, but not
> the full environment of logging in as root.
> Tried both ways, PATH is slightly different,
> for example?
>
> Having always used "su" to do root
> related things, other than trial and error,
> when should one use "su -" instead?
>
>     -- Bob
>
>
>> Neither 'gksudo' nor 'gksu' are recognized as commands by Fedora 15. Is
>> that just a Ubuntu thing?
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> This message has been scanned for viruses and
> dangerous content by *MailScanner* <http://www.mailscanner.info/>, and is
> believed to be clean.
>
> _______________________________________________
> grlug mailing list
> grlug at grlug.org
> http://shinobu.grlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/grlug
>

-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://shinobu.grlug.org/pipermail/grlug/attachments/20110922/42d63254/attachment-0001.html>