Re: [LINUX_Newbies] Re: Why windows gets more malware than Unix ,Linux and Mac?

Thanks Scott for the update on Fedora. You have always been helpful in that.
I think that Fedora still uses su - in preference to su and that some
limitations still exist. I have run across it with F12 and F14 and the gurus
there still advocate su - for full admin privileges. As for me, I install
sudo in Fedora and it works, although not as well as in Ubuntu. Some habits
die hard. :) I had a very hard time adapting to sudo and now it is just
second nature.

Many people think that su means superuser. It is a difficult distortion to
kill, it seems. As you say, you can su as any user. All of this only shows
how complicated Linux is for newbies to get a handle on.

Roy

Using Kubuntu 10.10, 64-bit
Location: Canada

On 20 February 2011 20:23, Scott <scottro@nyc.rr.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, Feb 20, 2011 at 07:27:38PM -0500, Roy wrote:
>
> > as root or changing to root temporarily. I believe that su actually means
> > substitute user and not switch user as previously said.
>
> Heh, maybe means super user, though I doubt it, as you can actually su
> to any user.
>
> Then there is Fedora
> > which has su and su -. If you run as su then you cannot affect system
> wide
> > changes. For that you need su - which means su - root. In many distros
> then
> > su is understood as root, but the su - is the traditional Unix way. You
> can
> > actually type su - bob to run as user bob. Then there is gksu and kdesu.
> It
> > all makes for an interesting experience.
>
> This has actually changed, around F10 or so. Fedora used to have root
> (in root's environment), have access to /sbin, /usr/sbin, and
> /usr/local/sbin (I think), while regular users only had /bin,
> /usr/local/bin, $HOME/bin and the like. However, it's now changed so
> that all users have, by default, the /sbin directories in their path.
> There are still some environment variables that you might only get if
> you do su -. The space dash, as the man page says, gives you the log
> in environment. So, if I do su, I'm still in my own home directory--if
> I do su -, I'm in root's home directory.
>
> Both OSX and Ubuntu, as well as other Linux distributions that use sudo
> by default without creating a root user, will allow you to do sudo su
> or sudo su -, thereby becoming root without having root's password. (If
> you Fedora, the BSDs, or anything else that can use sudo, even if they
> don't by default, that is, anything with a root account created, the
> same thing applies.)
>
> Some of the more traditional Unixes, for example AIX, still only give
> /sbin as a path to the root user.
>
> --
> Scott Robbins
> PGP keyID EB3467D6
> ( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 )
> gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6
>
> Xander: Well, I guess that makes it official. Everybody's paired
> off. Vampires get dates. Hell, even the school librarian sees
> more action than me.
>
>
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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