Re: New su behavior in util-linux 2.32
On 2018-08-12 00:13:31 +0000, Dale Forsyth wrote:
> ________________________________
> From: Pétùr <peturvilj@gmail.com>
> Sent: Saturday, 11 August 2018 7:41 PM
> To: debian-user
> Subject: New su behavior in util-linux 2.32
>
> Using 'su' generates now an path error when launching programs such as 'shutdown'. The cause is a new behavior described below.
> ---
> util-linux (2.32-0.4) unstable; urgency=medium
>
> The util-linux implementation of /bin/su is now used, replacing the
> one previously supplied by src:shadow (shipped in login package), and
> bringing Debian in line with other modern distributions. The two
> implementations are very similar but have some minor differences (and
> there might be more that was not yet noticed ofcourse), e.g.
>
> - new 'su' (with no args, i.e. when preserving the environment) also
> preserves PATH and IFS, while old su would always reset PATH and IFS
> even in 'preserve environment' mode.
> - su '' (empty user string) used to give root, but now returns an error.
> - previously su only had one pam config, but now 'su -' is configured
> separately in /etc/pam.d/su-l
>
> The first difference is probably the most user visible one. Doing
> plain 'su' is a really bad idea for many reasons, so using 'su -' is
> strongly recommended to always get a newly set up environment similar
> to a normal login. If you want to restore behaviour more similar to
> the previous one you can add 'ALWAYS_SET_PATH yes' in /etc/login.defs.
> ---
And this is illogical: the default behavior cannot be a bad idea.
If the current behavior is really bad, then 'su' should behave
like 'su -'.
> The new 'su' is useless for me because it cannot launch root program.
I have no such problem, though.
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