Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!purdue!decwrl!sgi!msc@ramoth.SGI.COM
From: msc@ramoth.SGI.COM (Mark Callow)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: SGI 'su'
Summary: an alternative
Message-ID: <28701@sgi.SGI.COM>
Date: 15 Mar 89 04:42:36 GMT
References: <8903141821.AA07266@adt.uucp>
Sender: daemon@sgi.SGI.COM
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
Lines: 26

In article <8903141821.AA07266@adt.uucp>, madd@adt.UUCP (jim frost) writes:
> I would appreciate it very, very much if someone would fix 'su' so it
> properly reads the destination user's shell configuration files.  I'm
> about to hack one together but I really shouldn't have to do that.
> 
> This is very important to me since our root .cshrc properly sets the
> prompt to the hash mark, but this is never called when su'ing.  If you
> forget, or if someone walks up, you or they will unknowingly be root.
> This is of course very dangerous even if security isn't an issue.

Here's how I deal with that problem in my .cshrc without changing su.
I ran into this when I first started working at SGI.  As far as I recall
the problem isn't with su but with the way System V handles the "effective
user" compared with BSD.

if ($?prompt) then
	if ("$prompt" == "# ") then
		set prompt = `hostname`'#\! '
set path=(/usr/local/bin /usr/bsd /bin /etc /usr/etc /usr/bin /usr/sbin /usr/hosts /usr/games /usr/NeWS/bin /usr/demos/bin)
		umask 22
	else
		set prompt = `hostname`'{\!} '
	endif
endif
--
	-Mark