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by ilyagr 1032 days ago
Native question: if you can `sudo`, can't you just `sudo bash`? What can you do with `su` that you couldn't do with `sudo bash`?

Or is the wheel group not really about being able to sudo?
3 comments
cdrt 1032 days ago
You’re thinking about it backwards

`su` predates `sudo` by a decade doesn’t offer the fine-grained control `sudo` has. With `su` if you have the root password, you can do anything you want as root. With `sudo` admins can configure what commands users are allowed to run as root and could specifically block `sudo bash` from running.

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tedunangst 1032 days ago
Wheel and su predate sudo by many years. sudo has a config file called sudoers; su has a config file called the wheel line in /etc/group.
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justsomehnguy 1032 days ago
It's 'substitute user', not just 'super user'. With su you can impersonate any user.

Wheel users can do anything because (default) sudoers contains

  %wheel  ALL=(ALL)   ALL
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/152442/what-is-the-...
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