Difference between "sudo su" and "sudo su -"?

Rush_898 · 10-17-2007, 02:00 PM

I inherited some Nagios boxes that I was told I should always su to root using the "sudo su -" command, when I asked what the "-" portion does no one knows. The bash prompt colors are different, that's about all I can tell. Google has failed me on this. Any ideas?

pixellany · 10-17-2007, 02:02 PM

"su" gives you root powers, but keeps your regular user environment

"su -" gives you root's environment also---just as if you had logged in as root.