On Wed 06 Jan 2021 at 07:35:08 (-0500), Greg Wooledge wrote: > On Tue, Jan 05, 2021 at 10:38:39PM -0600, David Wright wrote: > > But here on debian-user, I was really more interested in why the value > > of DISPLAY was apparently changed by one su and not the other (or > > perhaps by both). The explanation, "probably with an alias for su", > > alias su="su -w DISPLAY", doesn't make any sense to me. Explanations? > > "su" will leave the DISPLAY variable intact, and "su -" will remove it. > I can see no evidence to the contrary, regardless of whether I'm using > the ALWAYS_SET_PATH config variable. > > The behavior is simple and consistent for me.
And for me. The only difference from the output you posted is $ cat /etc/default/su cat: /etc/default/su: No such file or directory $ but that only affects PATH anyway. > If someone is seeing DIFFERENT behavior than this, they have yet to > demonstrate it for us. I thought the OP already had demonstrated it, in https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2021/01/msg00000.html where we have: User's DISPLAY not revealed After su DISPLAY=:0.0 (exit) User's DISPLAY not revealed After su - DISPLAY=:0 As I pointed out, these values will both succeed in pointing to the same actual display (though I only tested that they both work on my own display, called ":0"). But they are textually "DIFFERENT", so they can't both be copied from the user's (unrevealed) value. So what I sought was an explanation of the OP's transcript, not that of yours and mine. Cheers, David.
