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CALIFE(1)		     General Commands Manual		       CALIFE(1)

NAME
     calife -- becomes root (or another user) legally.

SYNOPSIS
     calife [-] [login]

	    or

     ... [-] [login] for some sites (check with your administrator).

DESCRIPTION
     Calife  requests user's own password for becoming login (or root, if no lo-
     gin is provided), and switches to that user and group  ID	after  verifying
     proper  rights  to do so.	A shell is then executed.  If calife is executed
     by root, no password is requested and a shell with the appropriate user  ID
     is executed.

     The invoked shell is the user's own except when a shell is specified in the
     configuration file calife.auth.

     If ``-'' is specified on the command line, user's profile files are read as
     if it was a login shell.

     This is not the traditional behavior of su.

     Only  users  specified  in calife.auth can use calife to become another one
     with this method.

     You can specify in the calife.auth file the  list	of  logins  allowed  for
     users when using calife.  See calife.auth(5) for more details.

     calife.auth is installed as /usr/local/etc/calife.auth.

FILES
     /usr/local/etc/calife.auth
		       List of users authorized to use calife and the users they
		       can become.
     /usr/local/etc/calife.out
		       This script is executed just after getting out of calife.

SEE ALSO
     su(1), calife.auth(5), group(5), environ(7)

ENVIRONMENT
     The  original  environment  is  kept. This is not a security problem as you
     have to be yourself at login (i.e. it does not have the same  security  im-
     plications as in su(1)).

     Environment variables used by calife:

     HOME  Default home directory of real user ID.

     PATH  Default  search  path  of  real  user ID unless modified as specified
	   above.

     TERM  Provides terminal type which may be retained for the substituted user
	   ID.

     USER  The user ID is always the effective ID (the target user ID) after  an
	   su unless the user ID is 0 (root).

BUGS
     The  MD5-based  crypt(3)  function is slower and probably stronger than the
     DES-based one but it is usable only among FreeBSD 2.0+ systems.

HISTORY
     A calife command appeared in DG/UX, written for Antenne 2 in 1991.  It  has
     evolved  considerably  since  this  period with more OS support, user lists
     handling and improved logging.

     PAM support was introduced in 2005 to port it to MacOS X variants	(Panther
     and up).

AUTHOR
     Ollivier Robert <roberto@keltia.freenix.fr>

FreeBSD ports 15.quarterly     September 25, 1994		       CALIFE(1)
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