On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 6:18 PM, William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 09, 2010 at 05:30:40PM -0700, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 1:20 PM, Bill Longman <bill.longman@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > I actually prefer "sudo su -" -- as long as I'm giving it away!  :o)
>
> Afaik, there is no reason for "sudo su -"  It should be either
>
> su -
>
> or, if you are using sudo,
>
> sudo -i
>
> The disadvantage of "su -" is that it requires the user to know the root
> password.  But, "sudo -i" does the same thing without requiring the user
> to know the root password.
>
> You either didn't think or didn't actually try it.   "sudo su -" needs a
password, but it's the
user password.  Running su as root never needs a password.  Accordingly,
this works on
a stock Ubuntu with no root password.

"su -" requires the root password unless you're already root, and the root
password may or may not exist.

I didn't know about "sudo -i" (thanks), but when I tried "sudo -i" it
immediately asked for a password, for which
the user password was sufficient.  So it's entirely equivalent to but
slightly shorter than my version.  I'll stick with
mine because it's made of parts I already know and won't forget.

I think that if sudoers don't need to enter passwords, they're still
equivalent, but I have  not tried this.

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD