You can use "su -" so that you can use root's .bashrc, .profile etc which will give you full admin rights.
su by itself will give you root privliges but will not setup your environment variables as they would when you log in as root.

If this is a pain to type then you could set an alias i.e "s = su -"

typing su was never the problem... LOL it only 2 letters for crying out loud....
cmon guys i know you dont think im that lazy....


the reason i dont type su is because of I've encountered many programs that just for one reason or another didnt not believe i was had root access or enough rights. when i typed in su before compilation. Also environment variables get very picky and lot of other issues that i dont feel like listing

however i understand what you are all saying , but they way i see it one can still dork up there system to a point where advantage of having multiple users becomes nonexistant anymore. I know this one guy who had 3 users and root, and he dorked up his installation by trying to force upgrade glib. He was unable to login as anyname again after restarting.


I guess until i dork up my system i will still have my Windows XP mentality.

As tim1235 pointed out, "su -" does the trick because
with "su" you inherit the original users environment,
thus don't get the paths to sbin directories.

That may vary with distro, but I'm certain that you couldn't
harm my slack-installations ... setting fire or other physical
damage as a local user aside.


Cheers,
Tink

It is possible that in Slackware it is fireproof
I never used or tried Slackware but in Suse its possible. I have a friend that forced glib upgrade on wipeing out and overwriting many files the old glib had installed onto his system. After restarting gnome could never log him in as root or any of the 3 users he created prior to his dorking it up. Because many programs complained about the broken dependancies that were now a result of what he did. He basically had to reinstall gnome and the glib that came with the distro.

Just so you know, if you ever did decide to use su.... Typing the full or even relative pathname to programs like su is imperative in order to maintain common secuity practices. Someone could slip a tainted binary in your path so therefore type /bin/su just to be in the semi-safe side.

"Strict and tough cisco firewall" ehh? Yeah and I'll bet your still running X11 port, root at that! Better add the -nolisten option to startx before browse the web bud.

is that an known expoit of the x11 ????? x11 port??


im just curious, is it an exploit coming inbound from the web or something hackers can do manipulate once there on your lan????

Let's just say it's not wise for your X server to be listening for connections unless you know what your doing configuration wise.

Add "-nolisten tcp" to your /usr/X11R6/bin/startx script under 'default server arg'.

im actually learning something now


I thought xinetd was what listening for connecitions???


and X server was more related to recieveing instructions from libraries and code that tell it how to display to stuff on screen?

Xinetd starts services like inetd does. It has a config file and what you don't want started up you could edit acordingly. Just add # in front of any services you dont use in the conf file.

Many things in linux listen for connections, it could be tcp or plain out unix domain sockets. Any unecessary servers should be disabled, unless you use them. "netstat" passed with the right options is a great way to keep track of what's listening.