Problem running ifconfig as non root
 

I'm trying to run ifconfig as a non root user, with the following command:

su - root ifconfig

It prompts me for root password, I enter it correctly, then get the following error:

"/sbin/ifconfig: /sbin/ifconfig: cannot execute binary file"

Anyone have a clue?

I know I can just login as root, but I'd really like to be able to execute root commands as non root every now and again.

Nope, that produces same problem.

[wrybread@localhost ~]$ su -c "ifconfig"
Password:
bash: ifconfig: command not found

My bad,

You have the right idea, but you shouldn't be putting it all on one line:

And that's exactly how you should be doing it. It's a very bad idea to login as root, as you can easily mess up your system if you mistype something, and it can become a security issue as well.

If you are going to be using this cmd a lot, look into using the sudo facility.

this doesn't work because ifconfig isn't in the user's $PATH. You need to either specify the complete path to the binary withor get the root's environment, withEDIT: or add /sbin to your path, but you wouldn't want to do that.

Err, did you not see the correction I made above. Cheers.

Sorry, I guess since your posts were close together, and almost identical, I must have glazed over the second one.

Its alright. I was just messing around. I am guilty of doing the same thing on other peoples threads. :)