Misleading message in 'su' info document

Michael K. Johnson johnsonm at redhat.com
Tue Aug 19 14:06:58 UTC 2003


On Tue, Aug 19, 2003 at 08:50:02AM -0400, Jeremy Portzer wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-08-18 at 22:24, Bruce A. Locke wrote:
> > I'm sure by now most of you have read the "Why GNU 'su' does not support
> > the 'wheel' group" rant from RMS written years ago.  If you have not
> > seen it yet do a quick 'info su' and scroll down to the bottom.
> > 
> > What surprises me is this has not been pulled from the 'su' info page
> > years(?) after pam_wheel showed up in pam.  The statement that GNU 'su'
> > does not support the 'wheel' group may be technically true in the form
> > shipped by the GNU but it is misleading when used in Red Hat.  If I were
> > looking for wheel support and decided to check the su info page (as
> > suggested by the su man page) I would have read this statement and may
> > never have figured out the functionality was actually being provided!
> > 
> > In my opinion such historical baggage is harmful and should be pulled
> > from at least Red Hat's copy of the 'su' info page.
> > 
> > Any opinions?
> 
> I suspect this is just an oversight.  Have you filed a bugzilla bug?

Yes, it is an oversight.  When I first added PAM support to su,
I simultaneously created a patch to remove the rant and replace
it with somethign meaningful.  Must have been droped in the
meantime.

Definitely, please file a bugzilla report.

Thanks,

michaelkjohnson

 "He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book."
 Linux Application Development                     -- Ben Franklin
 http://people.redhat.com/johnsonm/lad/





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