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IntermediateDevOps & Toolsbeginner

Doing Admin Work with sudo & su

Relax. We'll talk through this in plain words — no textbook voice.

What you'll walk away with

  • Get comfortable doing admin work with sudo & su — no need to fear them
  • Practice running the commands yourself in the terminal
  • See how these commands come in handy on a real server or project

Let's think about it this way for a second

sudo (superuser do) lets you borrow root privilege temporarily, one command at a time — you type your password, and only users on the allowlist get to use it. su (switch user, usually su - root) fully switches you over to being root — every command runs as root, so a single mistake carries more risk of damaging the system. Modern practice (including Ubuntu) disables the root account by default and favors sudo instead — it keeps you conscious of each individual command, which makes it safer.

Let's connect this to a real-world scenario

When you want to install a package, it's sudo apt install <name>; when you want to edit a system-level config file, it's sudo nano /etc/hostname — as an ordinary user, you run regular commands normally and just prepend sudo to the ones that need admin power. Typing sudo -l lets you see which sudo commands your user is allowed to run.

Let's try it together in the terminal

bash
sudo apt update
sudo nano /etc/hostname
sudo -l              # ကိုယ်ရ command list ကြည့်
sudo whoami          # root ပြန်ထွက်, ဒါပေမယ့် ordinary user အနေနဲ့ဆက်နေဆဲ
You should see
Running sudo whoami will return 'root', but once the command finishes, you'll go back to being an ordinary user.

5-Minute Try-It

Try running sudo -l (it may ask for your password). Read the output and check whether your user has admin access.

A Quick Word of Caution

sudo rm -rf is basically 'rm -rf with a permission boost' — a single mistake becomes far worse with root privilege behind it. Always read a sudo command twice before running it.

Easy traps

  • Thinking your sudo password isn't being typed because nothing appears on screen — in Linux, not even characters show up while you type a password (a security feature)
  • Believing every sudo command is safe because 'sudo will catch anything bad' — sudo only grants permission, it doesn't protect you from your own mistakes

Now Try It Yourself

Try running sudo -l (it may ask for your password). Read the output and check whether your user has admin access.

You'll know it worked when: Running sudo whoami will return 'root', but once the command finishes, you'll go back to being an ordinary user.

Doing Admin Work with sudo & su | Thuta Learning