just a quicky...(su-ing)
 

can anyone tell me if there's a difference between su and su root ?

and if there is, is it important ?

many ta's

default if no name is specified is to su to the root user. So no there is no difference between those two commands.

There is however a difference in adding the - or not. Without it you won't really login as root and you won't get the root environment. So you would probably want to do 'su -' for most cases. Might want to read the man pages for more info.

Mik is absolutely correct.

With su, by itself, you get root permissions, but with su - you get the root path environment also. The difference being that without the path environment, finding and executing root permissioned executables becomes more of a problem.

What I always do when I need root access at the CLI when I'm my "normal" user:

su -

<Respond to password prompt>

<Do what I need to do>

exit

And I'm back to my "normal"user.