Jee, you've got some attitude...:jawa:
"....While boiling, liquid's flowing over edge,
Increase by view is only but in fact is damade"
W. Shakespeare


Patience is virtue

Look, I'm sorry, but I did post as soon as I could. I took offense to what you said because I used the fix that was posted, applied it, then finished up what I started. After rebooting, it failed again, so I booted back into Windows, hopped back online, and posted what you read a few minutes ago. Now I have a new problem, and I hope for some help with it.

Didn't mean to snap at anyone. ;) Just wondered that wrong usage of "su" spreads like a disease, although so many users run into that trap. Plain "su" is insufficient, because it doesn't enable superuser's environment, such as the PATH environment variable.

Thanks for responding, and I appreciate a lesson in Linux whenever I can get it. Difference between forms of "su" duly noted. :)

Or perhaps the linux gurus could give noobs full paths to commands they want to run. So instead of "type fdisk /dev/hda" give them /sbin/fdisk/ just to make sure. Then maybe explain why the path is important for root and why you should type "su -" when wanting to run commands located in /sbin/. Happy New Year everyone...be happy!

Well, you don't really want to remember whether a tool is in /bin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, /sbin, /usr/X11R6/bin or elsewhere. Further, specifying full path to programs is misleading as it's not necessary and should not look like it is.

I beg to differ...

To fully understand an OS it's good to know what's in /bin and what's in /sbin. What if you're paths get screwed up? What if you're working on someone elses machine and their paths are different? Folks need to learn what's where.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying EVERY post with a command it in should list the full path. But not everyone here is very familiar with linux and jumping on them because they don't know what su - does is not needed. Lots of people are intimidated enough with linux, coming to a forum is somehting many of us didn't have when we were learning linux and I think it's a great thing. My point in the first post was be friendly and explain things to the noobs...don't jump all over them when they don't do something right. We're here to help people...not scare them off.

Only roughly, not more. Look at this:

$ ll /bin | wc -l
97
$ ll /sbin | wc -l
223

That's the number of files in those directories on this machine. It's beneficial to understand the purpose of the different bin directories. But you don't really care where exactly a tool is stored. When you know the distribution, you know the tool is installed by default and is available when you're logged in.

Moot points. You can set PATH anytime you like. And a good admin doesn't alter the default superuser path when you are supposed to work in the same environment. Altering the paths doesn't make sense if program locations are not different. If they are different, correct default PATHs are essential, so e.g. tab completion works. And with altered search path, it's even more important that users know to login correctly.

No, they need to learn what's available and when and how to use it.

FWIW I'm with misc
I offered the full path to help with a particular problem - I don't believe it's warranted normally.
Remember that the post I responded to initially said Not su'd, but logged in. I took that to mean there was a more general problem. Citing the full path was simpler than trying to determine what that more general problem was.

Sorry if I caused any confusion...

Anyway, can anyone help with my newest problem?

Not to worry - it gave a few of us the opportunity to get some things aired ;-)
Not I - I haven't touched FC, so can't offer anything material.

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