whats the difference between sudo and su?

[jett]

they seem to do the same thing.
when you log into su dont you have total control?
or does sudo do something that su doesnt?

[scorp123]

does sudo do something that su doesnt?

It jumps out of the session once it's finished, su doesn't per default, it stays in the account you su'd into. A funny combination under Ubuntu is sudo su - ... gives you a root shell

[clem]

su --> login as root
sudo --> run as root

With su you're talking permissions, owners, groups.
With sudo you're talking sudoers, list of people who can run things "without being root" or "having permissions on the files".

Clem

[rfruth]

Here is some su vs sudo info https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo