[NTLUG:Discuss] SuSE 9 or 9.1 PATH environment changes after su

[Kevin Brannen]

Ralph Green, Jr wrote:

>Howdy,
>  Another list member has told me off-list that he does not believe me
>when I told him that the PATH environment variable changed after I did
>an su to root.  I tried this on SuSE 9 and 9.1 and I did not pass any
>parameters to the su command(i.e., su, not su -).  Can anyone else here
>tell me what their SuSE system does?  If you have tweaked your system to
>change this behavior from it's default, then please tell me that, too.
>  
>

You mean like:

[1 ~ /home/kevin] echo $PATH
.:/home/kevin/bin/Linux:/home/kevin/bin/scripts:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/games:/opt/gnome/bin:/opt/tcm/bin:/opt/pgsql/bin:/opt/svn/bin:/opt/kde3/bin:/home/kevin/toolbox/lib
[2 ~ /home/kevin] su
Password:
dilbert:/home/kevin # echo $PATH
/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/X11R6/bin

That's what I'd expect because when it switches user, it should execute 
the new user's .bashrc (or the default in /etc somewhere if the new user 
doesn't have one [my root person does not]).

Or we could read the man page, :-)

---
       -m, --preserve-environment
              do not reset environment variables
---

Seeing that is has this option, I'd say that the default is that is will 
reset the env-vars.  Let's try it:

[8 ~ /etc] su 
-m                                                             
Password:
[2 ~ /etc] id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root)
[3 ~ /etc] echo $PATH
.:/home/kevin/bin/Linux:/home/kevin/bin/scripts:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/games:/opt/gnome/bin:/opt/tcm/bin:/opt/pgsql/bin:/opt/svn/bin:/opt/kde3/bin:/home/kevin/toolbox/lib

Gee whiz, look at that. :-)  Of course, that probably only applies to 
the GNU su command (I have Suse 9.0).  On other Unixes it may be 
different.  I have no idea what the Posix standard says.

<soapbox>
And like so many other places, GNU wants you to go read info files to 
find out how the command really works because they're too lazy to make 
proper man pages (or is it arrogant because they think "info" is 
better?).  A pox on them for this stupidity!
</soapbox>

Kevin