Re: "su -" and "su" - what is the real difference?

[David Ehle <ehle@agni.phys.iit.edu>]

Good Question.

I had never thought THAT deeply about it, and always just thought about it 
in terms of which scripts would set which environmental variables and 
paths. su keeping your current environment, but changing you effective 
UID, while su - would give you root's Path and environment.

So, I would be interested in hearing what the additional security 
implications would be.

David.

--
David Ehle
Computing Systems Manager
CAPP CSRRI
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He who fights with monsters must take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into
you.

On Fri, 28 Jul 2006, LeVA wrote:

> Hi!
>
> Here comes a lame question yes I know, but I need to hear the
> experiences and opinions about this.
> I've read thru a number of documents which described the differences
> between the real and effective user ids and I am now just wondering
> about this:
>
> What is the difference (I mean in the "real world") between running `su`
> (getting a non-login shell) and `su -` (getting a login shell). Is
> there a security related problem with any of the invokings above? AFAIK
> the real and effective uids are always set to 0 after both commands.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Daniel
>
> --
> LeVA
>
>
> --
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