The FreeBSD Diary |
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su - how to become a super user. avoid using root
18 October 1998
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If you're like most people new to Unix, you do everything as root. You
shouldn't. I know I don't follow my own advice, but I'm trying to improve. Create yourself another account. Use that instead of root. Unless you really need root. You can always invoke su to become a super user. That way, you don't have to log out and back in every time you need the power. |
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wheel
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Only users in the wheel group can run su. The group can be
specified when creating a user via adduser. To add a user manuall, just
put the name of the user at the end of the line in /etc/group. For
example:wheel:*:0:root,marc This adds the user marc to the wheel group. |
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su
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To become super user, you do this:bash-2.02$ su Password: su-2.02# At the password prompt, supply the root password. Note that you might also want to use either the -l or the -m options. Respectively, these options will simulate a full login or leave the environment unmodified. see man su for details. |