Hello everyone,

For those who are interested, i would like to highlight the differences between using ‘sudo’ and ‘su -c’ commands.

Although, it will be applicable to all linux distributions, in this blog i am going to concentrate on Ubuntu & Fedora.

1) Required Password:

• ‘sudo’ requires current user password.
• Whereas, ‘su -c’ requires root user password. (This is no coincidence. Infact, this was the very reason for introduction of sudo command).

2) Operational Speed:

• ‘sudo’ command is slower in operation as compared to ‘su -c’ command.
• (In the normal course of action, you might even not notice it. But, try using it over SSH or for SE-Linux like operations, you will notice the difference.)

3) It’s working:

• On issuing the ‘sudo’ command, os checks the sudoers file in /etc directory for a flag which tells is whether or not root like permission should be given to current user.
• On the other hand, when ‘su -c’ means, switch to super user(root) and -c switch says, only for this command.

4) Time Duration:

• Since, ‘su -c’ command elevates permission for only specified command, you need to enter root password, each time it is used.
• Whereas, on entering password for sudo command, it gives root like permissions for about 5 minutes. i.e. you don’t need to enter password again if you issue sudo command again.

I sincerely hope you liked it. Please leave your valuable comments and suggestions.

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