Ask Ubuntu General Room

Dammit, what is it with people suggesting sudo su? It's pointless, unnecessary and very inelegant. Where did this even come from? Did some idiot post it on a forum a decade ago and it has since been propagated all over the Ubuntu world?

Oli

11:21 AM

@terdon I agree it's not ideal but I can see where it came from... It's more intuitive than sudo -i if you know that the su command exists.

terdon

@Oli How? If you know about su and not sudo, just use su directly. I know it won't work on modern Ubuntu where root is disabled by default but if you know about su, chances are you are old enough to remember using it.

I'm just wondering where the idea came from. There are 2 different ways to get a root shell from sudo directly. Why bring su into it?

Being the pedantic little geek I am, it rubs me the wrong way :)

Oli

But that's what I mean... You can know about su and everybody and their dog has used the basic form of sudo... So it's not a great leap to stick the two together.

terdon

Yeah, I guess. grumbles about inelegance.

Journeyman Geek

@terdon: laziness ;p

also, I think howtoforge does that

terdon

11:51 AM

@JourneymanGeek AH! That might explain it.

Rinzwind

@terdon Sorry but if you want to make a FULL system backup you have to use sudo su :=)

terdon

@Rinzwind I do? Why?

Rinzwind

@terdon otherwise you will get tons of "permissions denied" messages :)

(since 4/5th of the system is owned by "root" )

terdon

@Rinzwind Why can't I do it with sudo -i?

Or sudo -s?

Journeyman Geek

using sudo with each command is a good idea since it makes you think whether you need it

@terdon: eh, howtoforge also suggests turning off selinux completely on fedora for setting up samba

samba is a pain in the arse, but its fairly trivial to work out how to do it the right way

terdon

12:05 PM

@JourneymanGeek Argh! NO! That can cause all sorts of problems with changing permissions on things you don't expect. That's another of my pet peeves, people using sudo all over the place where it's not needed :)

Journeyman Geek

@terdon: Oh, I actually think about when its needed

terdon

I'm sure you do, but you're hardly representative of the average user.

Rinzwind

@terdon to use sudo -i/-s with root is bad >:)

From the manual: **Logging in as another user**

Please don't use this to become Root, see further down in the page for more information about that.

sudo -i -u <username>

>:)

terdon

Huh? Is that from the Ubuntu man page for sudo?

They're suggesting not to use sudo -i?

Rinzwind

@terdon ubuntu help

@terdon noooooooooo. they are saying to NOT use it with "root"

no mentioning of other usernames ;-)

terdon

12:08 PM

As in sudo -i -u root? Why would you do that O_o?

Rinzwind

no idea :=D

btw... sudo -s IS sudo su(?)

terdon

OK, but that doesn't change the fact that sudo -i is cleaner, better, faster, prettier, and bakes better cookies than sudo su.

@Rinzwind Ah, but it's not actually calling su :)

j0h

12:44 PM

how do I update php5.5 to php5.6?

Do i have to recompile?

Pandya

1:23 PM

And finally I posted answer to find question & answer between two user Ids.

No Time

1:42 PM

You guys talking about su/sudo still?

Seth

2:17 PM

Spam, spam everywhere.

Ubuntu Questions on U&L

2:56 PM

0

Q: unzipping removing my zipped file

I have file.gz, when I try to unzip this file by using gunzip file.gz, it zipped the file but only contains extracted and removes the file.gz file. How can I unzip by keeping both unzipped file and zipped file?

ubuntu

Ask Ubuntu Meta

0

Q: upgrade to 14.04LTS

I want to upgrade my current Ubuntu 12.04LTS Precise to 14.04LTS version. I have installed all updates available in the update manager and even installed new hardware support. What kind of possible problems can I have if I go ahead with the upgrade?Should I take any specific precautions while upg...

discussion

Lucio

3:17 PM

Morning!

@JourneymanGeek tried but failed

@Seth Hey, I'm a mod there >:)

Seth

@Lucio Are you really? Your site needs some attention!

Lucio

:D

I hate Opera.

not that opera, the browser

Seth

It.. isn't the best, nope.

Lucio

Opera doesn't open internal IPs whilst default android browser does

Is that a question that I can ask on android.stackexchange.com?

Seth

Oh Android? I haven't found a single good browser for Android, although Chrome is ok.

Lucio

3:29 PM

yeah

anyway, I think that question will be OT in any stackexchange site :(

Journeyman Geek

If you have a specific list of needs you can try Software Recommendations

Lucio

I have a problem, not lack of choice

Seth

ah.

Lucio

but asking why some app is broken will be OT in any site

Seth

yeah

Lucio

3:41 PM

Is it "hive five" or "high five"?

google translate does not help at all

*doubts removed*

Seth

high five.

Like high up.

Lucio

what is high up?

bbl

Seth

5:10 PM

@Lucio nevermind.

I was trying to help clarify if it was high or hive..

Lucio

okay doggy

Seth

I'm an Iguana!

Lucio

5:31 PM

ups

Ubuntu Questions on U&L

5:41 PM

0

Q: Accidentally rm -r the wrong etc folder... Help?

Well as you can see from the title I managed to accidentally rm -r the wrong etc file in Ubuntu 14.0.4 Desktop. I also decided I would set up encryption on my home folder (Another mistake). Is there any way for me to restore the folder? Currently I have a bootable flash with Linux Mint 10 on it...

linux ubuntu rm bootable

Seth

tip of the day: Don't rm -r the wrong folder. It isn't a good idea.

Rinzwind

6:01 PM

@Seth sometimes rm'ing the correct folder is wrong too

someone I know once made a tar backup of a folder and then deleted the folder. (that was intended)...

problem arose when he realized the tar file was also in that folder

Takkat

6:21 PM

in days of Terabytes I don't rm much at all.

My old drives are now my litter bins where I mv things out of the way.

Ask Ubuntu Meta

8:59 PM

0

Q: Possible duplicate question

I would like to point out that this question: “Normal” variables in Upstart could be a duplicate of this other question: Expand variables in upstart script. I tested on lubuntu 12.04 and bug is still present. I hope this is the right place for this type of report.

discussion

hbdgaf

9:13 PM

ruh roh. installed updates last night. this reboot compiz crashed on login. compiz --replace & worked though

RPi Awesomeness

10:06 PM

Ruh roh!

@Rinzwind Nicely done!

hbdgaf

@RPiAwesomeness might be a borked xfce config file somewhere. my number of desktops went back to 1 with compiz --replace so...

RPi Awesomeness

Prolly

Can't wait till tomorrow. GTX 980 & 880 are being released.

Which is good for me, because it probably means lower prices on my GPU of choice :D

hbdgaf

I don't really do hardware porn any more.

RPi Awesomeness

Neither do I...never did...

Hardware Pr0n?

Braiam

10:48 PM

26

Q: Auto-flag duplicates of deleted questions for reopening / deletion

OK, so this is the second time I've come across a perfectly valid bug report here on meta.SO that was closed as a duplicate, and the question it was closed as a duplicate of then deleted. Since I don't have 10k here on MSO, I can't really tell when or why those questions were deleted, but I assu...

feature-request exact-duplicates deleted-questions

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