SU Behavior in Slackware 12

tronayne · 08-02-2007, 07:45 AM

I noticed that su - would not execute the environment settings; i.e, the content of .profile in the "target" account. When su - was executed, the prompt would be a $ or # depending on the user (and that none of the environment settings for the user would be set).

I use Korn Shell exclusively, so a user will have a .profile and a .kshrc file to set environment variables; these were ignored (and, I imagine, ignored in Bash, Bourne or C-Shell too).

Looking around, there is /etc/login.defs that contains a variable SU_NAME; I commented that out and the behavior of su is back to what I expect it to be. The blurb for SU_NAME is:

Code:

#
# If defined, the command name to display when running "su -".  For
# example, if this is defined as "su" then a "ps" will display the
# command is "-su".  If not defined, then "ps" would display the
# name of the shell actually being run, e.g. something like "-sh".
#

Lordy, I do so love improvements...

SCerovec · 08-03-2007, 04:04 AM

it's quite a shock this 12.0, ain't it

erklaerbaer · 08-03-2007, 04:55 AM

for bash .profile is executed.
maybe ksh is checking how it is invoked?

onebuck · 08-03-2007, 07:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SCerovec

it's quite a shock this 12.0, ain't it

Hi,

Not really! I think the biggest problem for Slackware 12.0 is that most users fail to read the documentation therefore a 'gotcha' jumps out.

RTFM 'ReadTheFineManual' still applies!

Sure, some things should be a turnkey for this type of user but that is not the Slackware way to hold their hands.