Just finished BLFS Chapter 3: Bash shell startup files. I can login as root or as user with no issues, however from user when I issue # su , it prompts me for my password (which I enter correctly) and hangs for about a minute then segfaults. I can escape while it hangs with ctrl+c and it will enter super user but with the generic " -bash-4.3# " prompt.

EDIT: I removed everything from that section (profile profile.d and /etc/skel) and su no longer segfaults.

I have a couple questions, a) perhaps I'm incorrect, but I thought "su" stood for "switch user"? I believe root is just another user... one with FAR more permissions. b) I do want to make sure you aren't confusing 'su' with its safer cousin 'sudo' and are in fact entering the Root for SU and YOURs for SUDO. Which command, which password are you entering? What you entered# su makes no sense to me unless you are becoming a user other than root or your standard user account. Why are you switching user as root?

Alright, brother's 21st last weekend and completely forgot about my question.

Sorry for the confusion, forgot some syntax: technically what I should have written in my post was $ su not # su

Having not installed the sudo package yet, su is how I enter root for whatever I need root permissions for. Although I solved the problem, I'll rephrase my question a little bit to clarify. When the computer first started and I was prompted for login, I could log in using either my user account or the root account and had no issues. The issue stemmed from using the su command within the user environment, for example: start computer - log in as ragnarok (user) - need root for something - use su to switch to root and that is when the segfault would happen (also happened when # su ragnarok if logged in as root.)

Still haven't figured out all of the specifics, but I had left an "EOF" at the end of /etc/bashrc in the chapter (copy paste mistake) Looked at my files' code for a while, even overlooking the "EOF" at the end of the file not really thinking. Would have figured a syntax error output not an outright segfault. Re-did all of the bash section an all is right with the world.

People here say sudo is more good than su. But I say su has more good security record than sudo. I prefer su for all root tasks.

Also using PAM is good choice together with su.

Yeah, I'm still reading up on PAM and deciding wether or not I will compile and install it.