Ok, so just recently installed Debian 10 on my new file server after running Debian 6 for a while. So far things are going pretty good, except one little thing.

If I do an su to root from a regular user and run an application...sometimes I get a "command not found". Some commands will work but others (one of these is fdisk) will give a command not found.

I have never came across this in my past (guess I got lucky) Linux experience, and at least from what I have read so far it relates to the PATH in my .profile files. The thing is, I'm not sure which config/profile file I need to edit for this AND what directories to add to allow my programs to work.

I don't mind doing this under the normal root login (where it appears like most all apps work) but sometimes it's just quicker to su to make a quick fix.

Look at using the -l option if you want the normal login environment for the target account. That would then include the PATH variable.

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To elaborate on the previous post when you login using just su your still using that users path environment not root's. I have not compared the default path environment between the two versions but it appears that /sbin is not included for a regular user.

However, using su - or su -l will switch to root's environment. You will notice when using su - that you are switched to root's home directory but su you remain in that directory.

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I gave it a shot and it works fine. Thanks turbocapitalist and michaelk! And thanks michaelk for the additional details, that helped a lot.