We have multiple commands which deal with sensitive information like passwords, system hardware on Linux. By preventing regular users from executing these commands helps to protect the system. In order to gain administrative access and gain some of the privileged commands you have to be logged in as a root user.
List of Commands
- The
SU
Command syntax:su OPTIONS USERNAME
The su
command allows you to temporarily act as a different user.
By default, if a user account is not specified, the su
command will open a new shell as the root user, which provides administrative privileges.
After executing the su
command a password is required.
As a security measure, the password will not be visible as it is typed, so you have have to type it correctly.
admin@localhost:~$ su -
Password:
root@localhost:~#
As you can see the has changed and reflected to root@localhost
switching from admin@localhost:
. This means you are now logged in as a root user.
To logout and return to admin account use exit
command, It will change back
root@localhost:~# exit
logout
admin@localhost:~$
To avoid executing any sensitive commands, we configure the Steam Locomotive command, the sl
command, to require administrative access. If the command is executed as admin in this case, it fails:
admin@localhost:~$ sl
-bash: /usr/bin/sl: Permission denied
To execute the sl
command with administrative access use the su
to switch to the root account
admin@localhost:~$ su -
Password:
root@localhost:~# sl
- The
Sudo
Command syntax:sudo [options] command
Thesudo
command allows a user to execute a command as another user without creating a new shell. Like thesu
command, thesudo
command assumes by default the root user account should be used to execute commands.
NOTE: The
sudo
command can be used to switch to other user accounts as well. To specify a different user account use the-u
option.
sudo
provides administrative access for the execution of the specified command. This is an advantage as it reduces the risk that a user accidentally executes a command as root.
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Top comments (1)
Just notice that normal users don't have the
sudo
permission to usesudo
to get root privilege temporarily.It should choose one of approaches to complete that:
/etc/sudoers.d/
folder.sudo
group on Linux Ubuntu/Debian distribution.wheel
group on Linux CentOS/RHEL distribution.