Vote for new Ubuntu Feature---Let's try it again

[Jeffrey F. Bloss]

Derek Broughton wrote:

> Jeffrey F. Bloss wrote:
> 
> > Robert Aldridge wrote:
> > 
> >> Try doing 'sudo su' in a terminal (console/Konsole, whatever) when
> >> you want to do several commands as root.  This promotes you to root
> >> until you enter the command 'exit' which drops you back to your
> >> user account.
> > 
> > The right way to do this is 'sudo -i'. This starts your interactive
> > shell and resets the environment to root's, unlike 'sudo su' or even
> > 'su -'.
> > 
> > To be honest, I've never seen anyone use 'sudo su' before. 
> 
> I would have suggested quotes around "right" :-)  The "right" way in
> most distros could not be 'sudo -i' because that option doesn't (at
> least didn't) exist.  A quick check of the various other linux boxen
> immediately available to me (one CentOS, one Red Hat, the other I'm
> not sure...) shows they don't support -i.  So "sudo su" becomes the
> normal procedure (though only one of those boxes actually lets me do
> that).

Actually leaving the quotes out should be fine for most. This isn't a
distribution dependent issue, sudo is just another piece of software.
If your copy is outdated and your distribution is lacking an "easy"
update, the "right" thing to do would be to get one from Gratisoft. It
will fix some known security issues in the process. ;)

That quibble and scenarios where it's impossible to upgrade aside
'sudo su' is *still* a borked utterance. The "right" way to gain root in
a semi-permanent way is 'su -'.

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