[conspire] sudo -i vs sudo su - ? [Was:] Help with GRUB

[Steve M Bibayoff]

Hello,

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
> Quoting Nick Moffitt (nick at zork.net):
[...]
>>       2. sudo -i
>>               This is basically equivalent to "sudo su -", in that it
>>               drops you into the root environment as it's configured
>>               on the machine.
>
>
>       -i  The -i (simulate initial login) option runs the shell specified in
>           the passwd(5) entry of the user that the command is being run as.
>           The command name argument given to the shell begins with a "-" to
>           tell the shell to run as a login shell.  sudo attempts to change to
>           that user's home directory before running the shell.  It also ini-
>           tializes the environment, leaving TERM unchanged, setting HOME,
>           SHELL, USER, LOGNAME, and PATH, and unsetting all other environment
>           variables.  Note that because the shell to use is determined before
>           the sudoers file is parsed, a runas_default setting in sudoers will
>           specify the user to run the shell as but will not affect which
>           shell is actually run.
>
> On reflection, "sudo su -" is probably the method one should favour.

Reason?

I instinctively run "sudo su -" instead of "sudo -i", but really don't
know why(probably because I learned the former first or maybe because
I use "su user" alot)


Steve