Im accessing my sever over SSH, with a normal user account. At some point i need to log as root, i have the root and password credentials, but when I invoke the sudo - command the prompt ask me for a root password for the current logged user user, how can i change the username back to root?
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1 Answer
I think you're confusing two commands: sudo and su.
sudo allows you to run a single command as another user.
su allows you to switch to another user.
So, when you've signed in as your normal user, if you want to issue a single command as root, you should use sudo:
$ sudo <command> This will ask for your password.
Likewise, if you want to issue a command as user jimbob:
$ sudo -u jimbob <command> This will also ask for your password.
If you want to switch to the root user:
$ su - This will ask for the root password.
It is highly recommended that you always use sudo to run privileged commands, though, instead of switching to another user.
