From Wsms

Note: This page should be titled su (all lowercase). It is Su due to technical limitations of Mediawiki.

su is a shell command that let's you switch users, usually to the root user.

You have to have (and know) a root password to use su. On debian/ubuntu/linuxmint systems, you may want to use sudo -i instead.

tips

Use su - to get the default path for root. Thay way you wont have to type stuff like /sbin/ifconfig

[ggeller@ws05 ~]$ su -
Password:
[root@ws05 ~]# echo $PATH
/usr/kerberos/sbin:/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/root/bin

see also

man su
sudo
Linux_commands