Bug#276419: [Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#276419: su appends the positional args to the command line

[Alexander Gattin]

Hi!

On Fri, Jul 08, 2005 at 03:03:32PM +0200, Nicolas François wrote:
> a patch was included in the 4.0.3-36 release, but this one breaks some
> scripts (see #317264).

Yes, but really those scripts are buggy, not new su.

> Thus, I'm considering to revert this patch and fix your bug by documenting
> the su behavior in its man page.

Please, don't do this, because it will make our su
different from the rest of Unix world.
(see e.g. http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=su or
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/816-5166/6mbb1kqhg?a=view)

> Here are some details on the issues introduced by the patch:
> 
>  * arguments are no more concatenated to provide only one string to the -c
>    option of the shell:

Right behaviour.

>  * -c is no more provided to the shell when it is not provided to su:

Again, absolutely correct behaviour.

>    This break invocation of su like:
>      $ su $LOGNAME bash

And what should this mean? `su luser bash -i`?
or `su luser bash -c`? ;)

> As the old behaviors are assumed by some packages (at least pbuilder,
> and probably others),

Those are buggy and just need to be fixes ASAP.

> I think it is better to revert the patch, and just
> document the fact that -c is always provided to the invoked shell

Return to broken state and explicitly document that
Debian has broken su? Please, don't do this!

> Do you agree with this?

I guess that Helmut will disagree.

-- 
WBR,
xrgtn