From owner-freebsd-questions  Wed Sep  5 13: 5:10 2001
Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Received: from post.mail.nl.demon.net (post-10.mail.nl.demon.net [194.159.73.20])
	by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5B73737B403
	for <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>; Wed,  5 Sep 2001 13:05:04 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from [212.238.77.116] (helo=buffy.raggedclown.net)
	by post.mail.nl.demon.net with smtp (Exim 3.22 #1)
	id 15eiv0-0004CD-00; Wed, 05 Sep 2001 20:05:03 +0000
Received: by buffy.raggedclown.net (Ragged Clown Mailhost, from userid 500)
	id AD634B674; Wed,  5 Sep 2001 21:35:33 +0200 (CEST)
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2001 21:35:33 +0200
From: Cliff Sarginson <cliff@raggedclown.net>
To: Bsd Newbie <bsdneophyte@yahoo.com>
Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: difference between su and root?
Message-ID: <20010905213533.A4295@raggedclown.net>
References: <20010905185625.14061.qmail@web20103.mail.yahoo.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.16i
In-Reply-To: <20010905185625.14061.qmail@web20103.mail.yahoo.com>; from bsdneophyte@yahoo.com on Wed, Sep 05, 2001 at 11:56:25AM -0700
Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Precedence: bulk
List-ID: <freebsd-questions.FreeBSD.ORG>
List-Archive: <http://docs.freebsd.org/mail/> (Web Archive)
List-Help: <mailto:majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG?subject=help> (List Instructions)
List-Subscribe: <mailto:majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG?subject=subscribe%20freebsd-questions>
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG?subject=unsubscribe%20freebsd-questions>
X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG

On Wed, Sep 05, 2001 at 11:56:25AM -0700, Bsd Newbie wrote:
> 
> Are there any differences between the two... or is su another way of
> saying root?
> 
> -Sameer
> 
You log in as root at the login prompt.
If you are logged in as an normal mortal and know the root
password you can log in as root with "su".
"su" means "set user" and you can su to any user login name
that you have the password for. If you are root you can su
to anybody without their password.

There is a little more to it than that, there is a flag "-"
which causes "su" to execute profiles etc as though you
had logged on at the login prompt.

Read man su for more explanation.

Security dictates the disallowing of network logins as root;
typically you will log in as yourself and then su to root
if you need to do system maintenance tasks.

Cliff

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message