Why use "su -" rather than "su"

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Paul Howarth wrote:

Mike McCarty wrote:


I have a general *NIX admin question. Why does one want to use
su -
as opposed to just su? I think I understand the difference in regards
to "su -" actually changes you to root, as if logged in that way, as
opposed to simply granting root privilege. But why do that? If I do
that, then I lose my path settings, and can't run my normal editor, which
is in ~/bin and so on. I just use "su".

What am I missing?


You're missing getting /sbin and /usr/sbin on your PATH, which you probably want for what you're about to do as root. If you already have those directories on your regular user's PATH (which is not the default), "su -" probably doesn't help you much. But it does for most people.

Paul.

Hmm. So I give up my regular editor in return for not having to type /sbin/

Well, I think I'll go along the way I am. I'm a pretty good typist.

I thought there might be a *real* reason, and I had missed something. I
was wondering if there might be some subtle problems which would bite
me later.

Thanks.

Mike

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