why can't I su to root?

[Richard Todd]

anderson at csli.Stanford.EDU (Steve Anderson) writes:
>The tcsh on afsg.apple.com works fine, except for one thing: when I
>login with this as my shell, it doesn't run my .login, apparently. The
>same thing happens with bash as my login shell. Only when my default
>shell is sh or csh is .login run.

  Hmm.  Is your default session type the Mac 32-bit or 24-bit session?  
I've noticed that for some reason when logging in to that type of session,
when your shell is tcsh, that your .login is not executed.  Looks like
CommandShell is doing something bizarre and isn't prepared to handle 
shells besides sh and csh; a quick strings of CommandShell shows the 
strings "/bin/sh -i" and "/bin/csh -i".  (Hmm...anybody out there using
ksh and experiencing this problem?)  

  Quick workaround: instead of logging into the Mac 32-bit or 24-bit env.
from the Login window, log into the console emulator and start the Mac
environment by hand with the "mac32" or "mac24" command.  This has the 
additional advantage that when you find out that your favorite Mac app wasn't
32-bit clean after all and it takes MacOS down in a flaming heap of rubble,
you don't get logged out and have to log in again, you just get returned to
your shell prompt on the console.  (Note: the default scripts for mac32 and
mac24 don't do a screenrestore after they complete, so when mac32 or mac24
exits, it doesn't restore the screen to console-emulator (1-bit) mode.  
I recommend you use these aliases:
	alias mac32 "mac32; screenrestore"
	alias mac24 "mac24; screenrestore"
to get the desired effect.)
--
Richard Todd	rmtodd at uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu  rmtodd at chinet.chi.il.us
	rmtodd at servalan.uucp