Subject: bug#19477: 24.4; Init script from su terminal

From: Glenn Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 13:36:26 -0500

Álvar Ibeas wrote:

> ``if you run Emacs from a shell started by `su', Emacs tries to find
> your own `.emacs', not that of the user you are currently pretending
> to be [...] It gets your user name from the environment variables
> `LOGNAME' and `USER'.''
>
> The variables LOGNAME and USER have both the value `root'. The command
> `logname' returns instead my own user name.

Emacs is behaving as documented.

The `su' programs from coreutils (it's since been removed in favour of
the util-linux one) and util-linux (as used by eg Red Hat) do not change
LOGNAME or USER when su'ing to root.

It seems that Debian's `su' comes from the `shadow' package and does
change them.

But all the `su' programs are behaving as documented too.
It's a shame they don't agree with each other...