Can't SU

Zerimas · 03-02-2005, 09:48 PM

I am running DeLi Linux and I am unable to su to root as a normal user; can anyone help me?

Thanks in advance!

jtshaw · 03-02-2005, 09:53 PM

Make sure your user is in the wheel group.

Zerimas · 03-02-2005, 10:45 PM

My user account is in the 'wheel' group.

Gibsonist · 03-02-2005, 10:45 PM

can anybody explain to me why the group is called WHEEL in OpenBSD and several Linux Distros?

btmiller · 03-02-2005, 10:47 PM

Root is the hub which is surrounded by a wheel of privileged users.

To the OP: what's the exact error message? Can you login to root normally (not via su)? Can you check that permissions on /bin/su are 4755 (-rwsr-xr-x)?

dsegel · 03-02-2005, 10:50 PM

Short answer: it's a reference to "Big wheel", meaning somebody who is important. I'll try to find a link to more history. It's a carryover from old UNIX days.

Reference: http://www.redhat.com/archives/redha.../msg02358.html

As for the 'su' command - you may also need to add an entry to the /etc/sudoers file. With some distros you do this with a 'visudo' command, with others you can edit it directly.

Gibsonist · 03-02-2005, 10:54 PM

Thanks for the bit of background

emathias · 03-02-2005, 10:55 PM

Try to use "sudo" (http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/)

It's safer, because what an user does as root will be logged, and you can give difeerent permissions to the users.
There are Linux distr. (such as gentoo) that do not allow you to become root (it just can be made using something like sudo)

dsegel · 03-02-2005, 11:00 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by emathias
Try to use "sudo" (http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/)

It's safer, because what an user does as root will be logged, and you can give difeerent permissions to the users.
There are Linux distr. (such as gentoo) that do not allow you to become root (it just can be made using something like sudo)

Using 'sudo' instead of 'su' is great advice, but Gentoo most certainly lets you log in as root or become root via 'su' whenever you want. At least, in the normal configuration it does.

GSX · 03-03-2005, 02:48 AM

One question:

Code:

(-rwsr-xr-x) file...

What´s the meaning of the "s" in the file permissions?

Greetz
GSX

Zerimas · 03-03-2005, 05:58 PM

I took your advice and installed sudo and everything is working great; although I still need to do some fiddling around with my sudo config file.

dsegel · 03-03-2005, 06:21 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by GSX
One question:

Code:

(-rwsr-xr-x) file...

What´s the meaning of the "s" in the file permissions?

Greetz
GSX

It's the "set user or group ID on execution" bit. It sets the user or group to the appropriate value for the owner of the file when it is executing.

GSX · 03-04-2005, 07:09 AM

Thx for the info...

Greetz
GSX