[OT] sudo, why not su?

Derek Broughton news at pointerstop.ca
Tue Aug 9 16:54:43 UTC 2005


Sean Miller wrote:

> Derek Broughton wrote:
> 
>>I don't buy that.
>>  
>>
> You don't buy that "su" and "sudo" have different purposes?

No, I don't.  As Magnus put it, both are used to elevate privileges.  They
have somewhat different effects (and side-effects) but the purpose is the
same.
> 
>>>su
>>>----
>>>su switches user.
>>
>>like sudo -i (or sudo -i -u user)
>>
> That's like saying that you can get your dog to meouw... doesn't make it
> a cat...

sudo -i _does_, however, switch user.  

>>While the more generic sudo doesn't have a -i option, I think you can get
>>there with -s or -c (as long as the /etc/sudoers file permits it)
>>  
> Right, so our task in life is to make the "dog" behave like a "cat"?
> Whatever it takes? I just don't understand the point...

No, one of _my_ (very minor) tasks in life is to make every cat owner
understand they'd be better off with a dog.  Why use "su", when there is
the vastly superior "sudo" which does everything "su" does and then some?

> you
> are going to have to work a lot harder than that to persuade me I know
> nothing about Unix.

There's no need to be insulting.  I disagree with you - I _haven't_ called
you a clueless newbie.  I simply feel that making everybody access root
functions with a logged command, which can permit access at a very fine
level of granularity can only be a Good Thing.
-- 
derek





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