[LBo] Opening > su

[Inade]

Lynn Gallup wrote:

> When I attempt to open > su, I receive a "Sorry" message saying that 
> the file cannot be opened. Using the file manager, I floated the 
> cursor above the file name and it reports the file as being empty.
>  
> It hardly seems appropriate for a file of this type to be empty so I'm 
> wondering if something might have messed up when I installed SUSE. 
> What do you folks think?
>  
> If I decide to re-install SUSE, can anyone tell me a way to make the 
> installation occur in a different drive (not just a different 
> partition) or does GRUB require both Windows and Linux to be in the 
> same physical drive?
>  
> Thanks,
> Lynn
> P.S.: Thanks, Harold, for giving me the web address of that Linux 
> tutorial site. I'm starting thru it and it is a very good one, both 
> thorough (for the newbie) and well written.
> LG
>  

I'll reply to su here, and to the re-install Suse in a new thread.

The file su in the /bin or /sbin directory is a binary file, and it is 
the binary code of the program >su<, which is "become the superuser".  
You don't open that file.  You don't need to.

Here is an "uneducated" explanation of su (the explanation works for all 
the shell commands)

When you want to become the superuser, at the prompt line (command 
line), you type su. 

Your computer then goes:  >What on earth is su? Hem... It must be a 
command of some sort.<  So it checks the shell you use (which is a bunch 
of basics commands allowing you to use your computer at the most 
basic/core level) to see if there is anything about su.  It looks for 
that in /bin and /sbin (bin being for binaries - bin is for the user 
binaries, sbin for the system binaries).  When it finds the su file, it 
reads it and get its instructions of the behavior it should display, 
which is ask you for a password, and if it matches the password for the 
 >superuser< in its shadow password files, it gives you the superuser 
powers. And then waits for your next command.

You should learn to recognize the prompt line (command line).  It 
doesn't display the same symbol as a user and as a superuser.  If you 
don't look carefully, you might overlook what happened.

A user prompt looks like :   user at box:~$  (at least on my computer.  
Suse uses a different sign at the end).
A superuser prompt looks like:   root at box:/home/user#

The big difference:  the dollar sign and the # sign. Those are the 
essential clue you are looking for. If you type su and then enter, you 
input the password and then you get a prompt with a different symbol at 
the end, you are in as the superuser and can edit whatever file, and 
pretty much destroy anything you wish (or do not wish) to modify if you 
are not careful.

I hope this helps.

Jisao