problem with su

[Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P.]

Edmund Craske wrote:

>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org 
>>[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Jez Hancock
>>Sent: 20 March 2004 18:23
>>To: Eric Yellin
>>Cc: freeBSD
>>Subject: Re: problem with su
>>
>>
>>On Sat, Mar 20, 2004 at 07:41:53PM +0200, Eric Yellin wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>When I "su -m" and login as root, all I get in the prompt 
>>>      
>>>
>>is a % sign. 
>>    
>>
>>>My normal user shell is tcsh and the prompt looks like this:
>>>[eric at www4]/home/eric(29): but this is not kept when I su 
>>>      
>>>
>>-m. How can 
>>    
>>
>>>I change this?
>>>      
>>>
>>Have you tried copying ~eric/.cshrc to ~root/.cshrc?
>>
>>-- 
>>Jez Hancock
>> - System Administrator / PHP Developer
>>
>>
>>    
>>

>This isn't right, when using the -m flag su uses your current
>environment, keeping your shell, prompt etc the same as in your
>own account. All I can think of is that it executes something
>when it opens the new shell which changes it, which shouldn't
>be root's cshrc. Perhaps some shell script conditional gubbins
>around the prompt statement in the user's cshrc?
>
>Ed


Testing, one, two three.

I wrote (even having tested first) something
similar to the list almost 3 hours ago.  As it
hasn't shown up yet (mailman seems fine, is my
DNS down again?) we'll try again:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Seems a tad unusual.  Don't know if I can help,
but can you give me some info?

a. What is root's "shell" entry in /etc/passwd?

b.  From whence do you set your "normal" prompt?  /~/.cshrc?

If the machine is not used by others, a quick
workaround might be to simply copy your .cshrc
to /root/ and simply use "su".  But it does seem
a tad weird that "su -m" seems to be reading some
other resource file...or else my understanding of
"-m" is broken, which is entirely possible. "

Kevin Kinsey
DaleCo, S.P.