Comparison_of_privilege_authorization_features: su, sudo, gksudo

[LewRockwell]

Comparison_of_privilege_authorization_features

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gksudo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Su_(Unix)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...ation_features


one should understand the differences between these...


.

[Paddy Landau]

Thanks for that.

I understand that it is always safe to use gksudo, even with a command line, whereas sudo and gksu are not always safe (e.g. if running Firefox as root).

[LewRockwell]

gksudo...super-user-do

current user(whoami) must be on super-user list


gksu...substitute-user(perhaps "super-user" on some systems)

current user is substituted with user specified during "su" call

if no substitute is specificied AND current user is on super-user list then perhaps this successfully changes privileges

still, better to actually call specifically what you intend

hence, the original discussions regarding "sudo" and "gksudo"

.

[sisco311]

In Ubuntu, gksudo is a symbolic link to gksu:

ls -al /usr/bin/gksudo 
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 2009-07-21 10:36 /usr/bin/gksudo -> gksu

The default authentication mode is sudo, but one should be able to change it to su by running gksu-properties.

[Paddy Landau]

In Ubuntu, gksudo is a symbolic link to gksu...
The default authentication mode is sudo, but one should be able to change it to su by running gksu-properties.

Thank you, two new things that I've learned!