Re: [WBEL-users] No chkconfig or ifconfig commands?

On 7/16/06, Terry Henderson <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 7/16/06, Jamey Fletcher <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Terry Henderson wrote:
> > > On 7/1/06, Johnny Hughes <[email protected]> wrote:
> > >> On Fri, 2006-06-30 at 17:59 -0500, Jeffery Mathis wrote:
> > >> > I am trying to configure a DNS server using WBEL, but when I run the
> > >> > chkconfig or ifconfig commands, I get "command not found".  I'm new to
> > >> > WBEL, but I do have prior experience with Red Hat and CentOS.  What is
> > >> > going on here?  Does WBEL use different commands or something?
> >
> > >> Maybe you did not login with root in a way that gives you full
> > >> environment variables.
> >
> > >> Normally, administration is done as the root user and not another user,
> > >> and you can get to be root in a couple ways.
> >
> > >> The most common is to open a terminal and use the su (switch users)
> > >> command.  When using "su", you need to use a "-" with the command to get
> > >> all the user's environment variables (including the PATH):
> >
> > >> so to become "root" with all variables set ....
> >
> > >> su -
> >
> > >> OR
> >
> > >> su - root
> >
> > >> If you use su by itself without the the "-" {ie, "su" or "su root"} you
> > >> will have root privileges but will stay in your current directory and
> > >> not have all environment variables (like root's PATH).
> >
> > > Another sonetimes handy option:
> > > "su -m" affords full environment variables, (like root's PATH), but
> > > will leave you in current directory.
> >
> >
> > The trick is to know just what those switches do.
> >
> > su without a switch (just the name of the user being switched to,
> > defaults to root if not specified) does *nothing* but change the
> > effective user ID and create a new shell session, I'm guessing with
> > the same shell the user was using before.
> >
> > su with the -m switch (see above about user name) preserves the
> > *PREVIOUS* environment you had - and is actually the default action,
> > normally.
> >
>
> You are  correct.  "su"  and "su -m" are the same.
> Thank you for the correction.
> Someone gave me wrong information and I believed it, until now.
> From man su:
> -m, --preserve-environment
>               do not reset environment variables
>

I realize now where I got that erroneous notion / confused notion.
Suse systems are set up so that "su" and  "su -" do the same thing (so
that "su -" becomes obsolete in this case).  So on a Suse system, you
will use "su -m" to do what others do with just "su".

And there's a way you can link "su" to "su -" and others sometimes do
that for the sake of convenience but I can't remember off the top of
my head what the command is, but maybe someone else on here does. ?

>
> > su with just a dash (see above about user name) starts up a login
> > session for that user, so .profile, .bashrc, .bash_profile, etc. all get
> > run [assuming bash is the root user's shell].  I believe that if root
> > has a different shell as its default login shell, say ash or busybox,
> > then that is what shell would come up.
> >
> > This stuff can be tricky, and it's got a lot of years of bullshit crap
> > piled up as cruft, so you have to watch out.  A lot of documentation out
> > there tells you to add parameters to the X command in the startx script
> > on your system - but startx hasn't *BEEN* a script in quite some time now.
>
>

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