What is the difference between sudo X and running X as root?
- by Raffael
My question is asking regarding a specific observation that I would like to understand.
I just tried to install the package rJava in R and failed even though I prefaced the installation as suggested by the manual with:
sudo R CMD javareconf
Then I came across this comment:
Using sudo and running as root are not exactly the same thing. – Jon7
Desparate as I was I tried it:
sudo su
R CMD javareconf
And to my surprise I suddenly could install that package.
Sorry for the lenghty introduction but I wanted to give you a context to prevent answers like here. The question does not aim at specifically the described observation - rather at those "things" in general on Ubuntu.
My question is: How could this be possible? What is the difference between sudo X and runnding X as root?