Open Gnome Terminal in superuser mode

Paul Howarth paul at city-fan.org
Fri Jul 15 15:51:25 UTC 2005


Mike McCarty wrote:
> Ankush Grover wrote:
> 
>> Hey,
>>
>> There is no root terminal in Gnome unlike in KDE where there is a
>> root terminal.You will find
>> terminal under "System Tools".If you are logged as normal user give
>> "su -" at the terminal to become super user(root).
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Ankush
>>
>>  
>>
> I have a general *NIX admin question. Why does one want to use
> su -
> as opposed to just su? I think I understand the difference in regards
> to "su -" actually changes you to root, as if logged in that way, as
> opposed to simply granting root privilege. But why do that? If I do
> that, then I lose my path settings, and can't run my normal editor, which
> is in ~/bin and so on. I just use "su".
> 
> What am I missing?

You're missing getting /sbin and /usr/sbin on your PATH, which you 
probably want for what you're about to do as root. If you already have 
those directories on your regular user's PATH (which is not the 
default), "su -" probably doesn't help you much. But it does for most 
people.

Paul.




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