su Usage

Tom 'Needs A Hat' Mitchell mitch48 at sbcglobal.net
Wed Mar 17 21:40:52 UTC 2004


On Wed, Mar 17, 2004 at 05:13:58PM +0000, WipeOut wrote:
> 
> Can somone point me to a good doc on using "su"..
> 
> I have always just logged in a root because security was not really an 
> issue, but now I need to operate in a more secure fashion as far as user 
> account controls are concerned so the starting point I feel is to not 
> allow root to login directly with ssh..
> 
> This means I have to get to grips with the ins and outs of "su" but the 
> man page is a little shy.. anyone got any useful info?

With a standard user account if you type or click  one of the 60+ administrative
functions you  will be prompted for the root pass word.  i.e. For these things 
you do not need to do a "su -".

Because this set of tools that take advantage of "consolehelper" is so
rich you may not need "su -" as often as you expect.
Try "up2date" ....

If you are new to a unix system scan the man pages on the list of 60+
that you see when you type this in a console window:

    file  /usr/bin/* | grep consolehelper
  ....
	/usr/bin/up2date:          symbolic link to `consolehelper'
  ....
Then:
	man up2date

This will give you a clue of the list of tools and functions that the
system admin might need to touch.  Most people will only need a
dozen, so don't require of yourself to poke at them all ;-).



-- 
	T o m  M i t c h e l l 
	/dev/null the ultimate in secure storage.





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