Date: Sun, 26 May 2024 01:07:08 +0200
Author: Steffen Nurpmeso <steffen@sdaoden.eu>
From: Steffen Nurpmeso <steffen@sdaoden.eu>
To: Tobias Leupold <tl@stonemx.de>
Cc: ~alpine/users@lists.alpinelinux.org
Subject: Re: ash and su/su -
Message-ID: <20240525230708.4BKNEgwF@steffen%sdaoden.eu>
In-Reply-To: <1926392.IobQ9Gjlxr@ginuog>
References: <1926392.IobQ9Gjlxr@ginuog>
Mail-Followup-To: Tobias Leupold <tl@stonemx.de>,
 ~alpine/users@lists.alpinelinux.org
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BlahBlahBlah: Any stupid boy can crush a beetle. But all the professors in
 the world can make no bugs.

Tobias Leupold wrote in
 <1926392.IobQ9Gjlxr@ginuog>:
 |I'm new to Alpine Linux. I replaced Devuan with Alpine for my Raspberry Pi 
 |yesterday, and now I stumbled upon one thing that may be due to the \
 |Busybox 
 |ash shell:
 |
 |I wanted to keep the nice minimalism Alpine brings and keep using ash \
 |(on all 
 |my other machines, I have, like most of us, bash). I learned I could add 
 |~/.profile to add a nice PS1, aliases and such stuff there. I did that for 
 |both my normal user and root.
 |
 |However, I noticed that when I run su to become root, this file is \
 |not sourced 
 |and I get the default prompt I had before, without my aliases. When \
 |I do su -, 
 |I see the shell as if I e.g. connected directly to root via ssh, but \
 |e.g. the 
 |current directory is changed to /root.
 |
 |This is different from what I know from my other machines. On my Gentoo, 
 |Artix, Devuan and Ubuntu machines, I (apparently) see no difference to the 
 |shell, no matter if I login directly to root, or do an su.
 |
 |So what's the background? What is the difference of "su" and "su -"? \
 |And can I 
 |make ~/.profile being sourced when I do a simple "su"?

One is a full login, the other only starts an interactive shell
i would think.  Look at the content of $- and source your profile
if you really want to.  (Or create a file to source with all the
things you really always want, and put in .profile only things
really needed for login sessions etc.)

 |Thanks for all clarification and help!

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)