Re: tlug: su vs. su -l

[Selva Nair <selva@example.com>]

On Thu, 9 Mar 2000, Darren Cook wrote:

>  I recently read the man page (first time for everything) and discovered the
>  "-l" switch for su, which gives me the environment of that user. Very
>  useful (especially for the PATH).
>  
>  What I can't work out is why this is not the default behaviour (with a flag
>  to explicitly say you don't want their environment). Is there some
>  disadvantage to "su -l" and "su -l someuser"? Some security issue?

Yeah, for getting the PATH set it is very convenient, but -l means make
the shell the login shell which means change the directory to the HOME
of the new user. Isn't that a pain when you have done compiled a new
package as normal user and then issue # su; make install and realize
that  the directory has switched? But it may be useful if plain su
resets the PATH also along with HOME and USER. 

Selva

>  
>  Darren
>  
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--------------------------------------------------------------------
Next Technical Meeting: March 11 (Sat) 13:00 Temple University Japan
* Topic: "What's new in Perl 5.6"
Guest speaker: Simon Cozens (TLUG Perl guru)
Next Nomikai Meeting: April 20 (Thu) Linux Conference 2000 Spring Ed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
more info: http://www.tlug.gr.jp        Sponsor: Global Online Japan