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.