Timeline for What is the difference between the sudo and su command?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
8 events
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| Apr 27, 2012 at 20:41 | history | edited | Aaron Lake | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 203 characters in body
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| Apr 27, 2012 at 20:37 | comment | added | Aaron Lake |
Again for brevity's sake I omitted the many alternative methods of using sudo. Also, you can't do su -c command by default on OS X, since you don't know root's password. You can, however sudo su, change the password, then su -c command. I feel that the question was answered, and there wasn't a need to dive deeper in to alternate uses of sudo and su. However I'll update the post for the curious folks.
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| Apr 27, 2012 at 20:33 | comment | added | el.pescado - нет войне |
"The key difference between sudo and su is sudo runs a command as root, whereas su makes you root" - false, sudo -s runs shell ("makes you root"), and su -c command runs command as root.
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| Apr 27, 2012 at 19:21 | comment | added | Aaron Lake |
@Joe, I considered adding that information but omitted for brevity. As you describe, sudo is quite a robust utility and covering even basic functionality here would ultimately confuse or overwhelm the target audience looking for a differentiation between sudo and su.
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| Apr 27, 2012 at 19:19 | comment | added | Joe |
the 'without additional options' is a pretty significant qualifier ... they'll both let you become users other than root ... eg, sudo su -lm _www will let you have as shell as if the webserver user (by running the command as root, as it doesn't have a valid password)
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| Apr 27, 2012 at 18:26 | comment | added | binarybob |
In simple language terms sudo can be though of as super user and do. As an additional point, on OS X, once you have successfully authenticated you may then use sudo without a password for a short time (5 minutes by default, unless overridden in sudoers) after which you will have to type the password again.
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| Apr 27, 2012 at 16:01 | vote | accept | whitefleaCH | ||
| Apr 27, 2012 at 15:51 | history | answered | Aaron Lake | CC BY-SA 3.0 |