Re: [gentoo-user] su doesn't work for me.

[Dale]

Alan McKinnon wrote:
> Apparently, though unproven, at 16:28 on Sunday 10 April 2011, Dale did opine
> thusly:
>
>
>>> That was it!  I've now got su-ability from that normal user.
>>>
>>> Funny, though, on my (very) old Debian system I don't seem to have a
>>> wheel.
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>>
>>>> Best regards,
>>>> Yann
>>>>
>> I think that is a Gentoo thing.  It does add some security if you don't
>> want a user, like maybe some little kid, getting root access for any
>> reason.
>>
> No, it's pretty standard across Unix.
>
> The BSD's for example have had it since forever - members of the wheel group
> being allowed to sudo anything only came along much later.
>
> Leaving it *out* is a Linux-distro thing, probably from the usual usage case
> for Linux for many years - a server on the web that actually only had one user
> even though it was capable of being fully multi-user. The concept of wheel for
> su is pretty redundant in that case.
>
>

I learned something today.  I only used Mandrake before Gentoo and never 
saw anyone else mention it, except Gentoo users.  Sort of thought it was 
a Gentoo thing.

Thanks for the info.

Dale

:-)  :-)