Re: Sky is blue -- how to shutdown as user?

[Ahbaid Gaffoor <ahbaidg guyana net gy>]

Hello Benjamin,

having logged in as a user, when you're ready to shutdown, do an "su -"
instead of a
plain old "su". This way you'll get a root shell with your path set properly,

you'll now be able to do a "shutdown -h 0" no problem.

"su" by itself doesn't give you the paths, just access rights. "su -" runs
login scripts.

ttyl,

Ahbaid.

Benjamin Sher wrote:

> Dear friends:
>
> So many of you wrote in to comment on the user vs. root login question
> that I couldn't possibly answer everyone individually. However, I would
> like to express a general THANK YOU to all of you Linux wizards. You not
> only have the knowledge but the EXPERIENCE. And in this particular case,
> that is, user vs. root login, which I DO understand in principle, its
> your vast, cumulative experience that I wanted to tap. The consensus is
> that I should log in as user and switch to su, then exit back to user,
> then shutdown. A-ha, but THERE'S THE RUB!
>
> When I log in as user, switch to su to perform root functions (while in
> RH Afterstep or KDE or Gnome, or whatever -- fabulous GUI's, I might add
> -- ), that's when trouble starts:
>
> For example: I log in as user (sher), type startx, open nxterm and see my
> user prompt($). I then type "su", password, then perform root operations
> (e.g. whoami), then exit back to "sher" with the user$ prompt. Now, if I
> want to exit Linux, how do I do that? If I type su and try "shutdown -h
> now", I get the message: "bash: shutdown: command not found". If I exit
> Aftgerstep altogether and return to my user prompt at the console command
> line and type "shutdown -h now" I get the same answer."
>
> Similarly, if I log in as root, open nxterm and type "sher", I get the
> message: "bash: sher: command not found".
>
> I would prefer to log in as user, as most of you have recommened, but how
> do I shutdown from su (either in XWindow or at the console) when I am
> told by bash that "shutdown, etc" cannot be found? Instead, I have to
> reboot in order to log on again as root just to shutdown the system. Does
> this make sense?
>
> I gather from one writer that I have to change some append statement or
> some file in order to enable me to shutdown when logging in as USER, then
> switching to SU. Could someone please elaborate on this. And, please,
> remember I am still a newbie, please spell it out: what file, exactly
> where, exactly what. I want to start right, and, judging by what you all
> say, this is the single most important decision I will probably ever make
> in the long run.
>
> Is there something wrong with my Linux? Or am doing something wrong?
>
> Thank you all so very much!
>
> Benjamin
>
> --
> Benjamin Sher
> sher07 bellsouth net
> Sher's Russian Web
> http://www.websher.net
>
> --
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