From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Jan 5 14: 4:10 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de (dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de [139.174.243.252]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7D4EE14E7F for ; Wed, 5 Jan 2000 14:04:03 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from olli@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de) Received: (from olli@localhost) by dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de (8.9.3/8.9.3) id XAA37242; Wed, 5 Jan 2000 23:03:58 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from olli) Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2000 23:03:58 +0100 (CET) Message-Id: <200001052203.XAA37242@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de> From: Oliver Fromme To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: window manager question X-Newsgroups: list.freebsd-questions In-Reply-To: <8507jl$1ov9$1@atlantis.rz.tu-clausthal.de> User-Agent: tin/1.4.1-19991201 ("Polish") (UNIX) (FreeBSD/3.4-19991219-STABLE (i386)) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Mr. K. wrote in list.freebsd-questions: >> For the above reasons (and because of "good practice"), I never >> change root's login shell. Instead, I use ``su -m'' (as a >> normal user) to become root, which causes my root shell to be >> the same as my normal user shell (which happens to be zsh). >> In fact, my ``su'' is an alias for ``su -m''. >> > I just tried the su -m thing, and the strangest thing happened when I > typed "pine", I got all my user messages, plus all the root messages > combined. Is there any way to avoid this, or should I make sure I only > check mail when doing a normal su? I'd recommend not to read mail as root (I never do that). Instead, put an alias into /etc/aliases that forwards root's mail to all admins (or just to yourself if it's a private box). When you use ``su -m'', the environment variables are not modified (see the su(1) manpage), including $USER, $LOGNAME, $HOME, $MAIL... I guess this has confused your mail client. (As a simple precaution against such confusion, I modify some environment variables in my .zshrc if $EUID == 0.) Regards Oliver -- Oliver Fromme, Leibnizstr. 18/61, 38678 Clausthal, Germany (Info: finger userinfo:olli@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de) "In jedem Stück Kohle wartet ein Diamant auf seine Geburt" (Terry Pratchett) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message