From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon May 28 22:46:09 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E1593106566C for ; Mon, 28 May 2012 22:46:09 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from garya@dreamchaser.org) Received: from nightmare.dreamchaser.org (nightmare.dreamchaser.org [12.32.44.142]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A95F88FC15 for ; Mon, 28 May 2012 22:46:09 +0000 (UTC) Received: from [12.32.36.74] (freshstart.dreamchaser.org. [12.32.36.74]) by nightmare.dreamchaser.org (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id q4SMioL9035404; Mon, 28 May 2012 16:46:02 -0600 (MDT) (envelope-from garya@dreamchaser.org) Message-ID: <4FC3FFE9.6020302@dreamchaser.org> Date: Mon, 28 May 2012 16:44:57 -0600 From: Gary Aitken User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:12.0) Gecko/20120428 Thunderbird/12.0.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Robert Bonomi References: <201205282108.q4SL8fqJ090973@mail.r-bonomi.com> In-Reply-To: <201205282108.q4SL8fqJ090973@mail.r-bonomi.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Greylist: Sender IP whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-2.0.2 (nightmare.dreamchaser.org [12.32.36.65]); Mon, 28 May 2012 16:46:02 -0600 (MDT) Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: removing /var/empty on a non-system disk X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 28 May 2012 22:46:10 -0000 On 5/28/2012 3:08 PM, Robert Bonomi wrote: >> On 5/25/2012 4:01 PM, Polytropon wrote: >>> >>> I should have mentioned that I did the (successful) test >>> logging in as root (real console login). If you use "su -" >>> or "su root", the effect should be the same. You can always >>> check the success of your operation with the "ls -lo" command. >> >> Nope. That was the problem. I had logged in on the vty as normal user >> and done su root. Had to back all the way out and log in on the vty as >> root to make it work. > > I'm going to guess that you did 'su root', not 'su - root'. The two commands > are *NOT* identical. 'su root' does not run the root 'login' scripts; thus > environment variables (including path, user, logname etc.) are *not* set as > they are on root login -- this causes some 'am i root' tests to fail. OTOH, > 'su - root' should be equivalent to a root login in all respects. ahhhhhhh.. Thank you. That explains a number of things. Gary