

During this brief time interval, usually configured to be 5 minutes, the user may perform any necessary administrative tasks that require elevated privileges. In most cases, sudo lets a user issue one or two commands then allows the privilege escalation to expire.
#Su vs sudo su full
The sudo command does not switch the user account to become root most non-root users should never have full root access. The sudo command gives non-root users temporary access to the elevated privileges needed to perform tasks such as adding and deleting users, deleting files that belong to other users, installing new software, and generally any task required to administer a modern Linux host.Īllowing the users access to a frequently used command or two that requires elevated privileges saves the sysadmin a lot of requests from users and eliminates the wait time. The original intent of sudo was to enable the root user to delegate to one or two non-root users access to one or two specific privileged commands they need regularly. This difference is due to the distinct use cases for which they were originally intended. These tools both provide escalated privileges, but the way they do so is significantly different. Most sysadmins rarely use sudo because it requires typing more than necessary to run essential commands. Some days require staying logged in as root all day long. Many sysadmins log in as root to work as root and log out of our root sessions when finished. A user might need to run one or two commands as root, but very infrequently. There were usually many non-root user accounts on those computers, and none of those users needed total root access. The root user would also have a non-root account for non-root activities such as writing documents and managing their personal email.

#Su vs sudo su password
In this ancient world, the person entrusted with the root password would log in as root on a teletype machine or CRT terminal such as the DEC VT100, then perform the administrative tasks necessary to manage the Unix computer. Early Unix computers required full-time system administrators, and they used the root account as their only administrative account. The su and sudo commands were designed for a different world.

Our latest Linux articles Historical perspective of sysadmins
