At 1:27 PM +0100 7/16/05, Timothy Murphy wrote: >John Bray wrote: > >> and in any case, no matter if it is to root or another user, the - >> guarantees you've picked up that user's entire environment. again, it's >> the key to having consistent behavior when you are being that user, root >> or otherwise. > >Could you give an example where the difference matters? >(I usually say "su -" but I'm not really sure why. >When I forget it never seems to cause any problem.) The user you su from has put . in the path. A bad guy (maybe the mischievous user) put a file named ls in the current directory. You do su. You type ls. Something happens. The path settings are different, so you may need to remember where commands are stored. su - lets you "be" root without being distracted by extra details that aren't relevent to the normal danger of being root. You make an unnecessary mistake, such as typing rm -rf / usr/bin/foo. None of this matters if you have faith in the user and faith that there can't be any malware on your system. ____________________________________________________________________ TonyN.:' <mailto:tonynelson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> ' <http://www.georgeanelson.com/>
