From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Apr 16 23:55:05 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id XAA13751 for questions-outgoing; Wed, 16 Apr 1997 23:55:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from narcissus.ml.org (root@brosenga.Pitzer.edu [134.173.120.201]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id XAA13746 for ; Wed, 16 Apr 1997 23:55:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (fullermd@localhost) by narcissus.ml.org (8.8.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id XAA20764 for ; Wed, 16 Apr 1997 23:55:10 -0700 (PDT) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 23:55:10 -0700 (PDT) From: The Devil Himself To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: su to root Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Wed, 16 Apr 1997, Doug Jolley wrote: > Thanks to all (and there were many) who responded to my plea > for help in this topic. I am now able to su to root just fine. > > However, I'd like to through a couple of observations out for > comment. > > First, in running tests here it appears that it's the group > number and not the name that's important. I tested having > myself in group 0 but with that group re-named "spoke" rather > than "wheel" and I was able to su to root just fine. Well, yeah. The OS internally doesn't know anything about your username or groupname; it's all done with numerical UID and GID. You could call the group about anything you want; it just is set to wheel for the reason that it always ahs been in BSD. > > Secondly, and this was a surprise, it appears that in orde to be > able to su to root one must be associated with group 0 in the > /etc/group file. By that I mean that having the user assigned > to group 0 in the /etc/passwd file does not seem to work. That > appears to me to be in direct contradiction to what the man page > on group says. So, to wrap up this topic, am I missing something > on that point? Thanks again for any input. Hmm... I see what you mean about the man page. About the only thing I can think of is that wheel isn't meant to be a login group. Every user should have a login group; such as user, or usr, or student, or whatever. THAT'S the GID entered in /etc/passwd. Even root (on every system I've seen) is a member of some login group. The login group cannot be wheel, to my knowledge. When the system looks up permission to su, it looks in /etc/groups. So, try creating a group user or something, stick yourself in that in /etc/passwd, and also stick yourself in /etc/group uinder wheel. The man page would seem to say the other, but it makes more sense to me to be done this way. Anyone else have any input? > > ... doug > ______________________________________________________________________________ > Doug Jolley mailto://doug@cybernautics.net http://www.cybernautics.net > Don't bogart that file, my friend. Net it over to me. > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* |FreeBSD is good. FreeBSD is our friend. UNIX is our god.| *Micro$oft is bad. Micro$oft causes problems.* |MicroBSD??? I DON'T THINK SO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!| |"I hate quotes in signature files" :-} MAtthew Fuller| *fullermd@narcissus.ml.org FreeBSD junkie* |http://keystone.westminster.edu/~fullermd Westminster College| *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*