Bug#276419: [Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#276419: su appends the positional args to the command line
Alexander Gattin
Alexander Gattin <arg@online.com.ua>, 276419@bugs.debian.org
Fri, 8 Jul 2005 23:48:03 +0300
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