Hi, I'm been googling long and hard but haven't been able to find much information about the 'devel-su' command, beyond the fact that it's the command to use on Sailfish to switch to the root user. I also couldn't find the source code for it anywhere.
If there is someone with more insider knowledge here, I'd love to hear about where this command came from and how it differs from 'su'. The first mentions of 'devel-su' I've been able to find were from 2011 in relation to MeeGo. I couldn't find any information about why this command was created for MeeGo though. It may have been related to MeeGo's security platform Aegis (part of the Mobile Simplified Security Framework it seems) but there's precious little information about Aegis or MSSF out there. Back in the Meego days, 'devel-su' would let you switch to, quite literally, a developer super user account, which had more privileges than a normal user but wasn't quite root (or at least it seems that way from the few user complaints I could find). Sailfish is very different however. There's no Aegis there. The 'devel-su' command lets you switch to the real root user and gives you full root access to your device. In fact, once you're root, you can just reset the root user password (which appears to not be set or be set to a random value by default) and then just use the 'su' command normally instead of 'devel-su' ( https://together.jolla.com/question/30565/howto-using-su-instead-of-devel-su/ ). So why 'devel-su' then? AFAICS, one difference between 'su' and 'devel-su' is that 'devel-su' checks the password set in the device's Developer Mode settings instead of using the normal root password. So you can disable root login via 'devel-su' or change the 'devel-su' password there. Any insider info would be greatly appreciated :) Mehdi
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