# After entering correct password for su command, a (END) prompt



## germanshephard (Feb 22, 2010)

Greetings,

I have only been around these forums going on a few days, am beginner/intermediate with FreeBSD and I want to say hello first of all!

My question is, I just noticed when I log on as a regular user in the console or in a terminal, when I su to root, enter the password correctly, I am then left with this prompt:


```
$ su
Password:
(END)
```

...after which I have to press 'q' to return to a normal # prompt.  It's as if after entering the root password, I am stuck in a pager (less) command.  Any ideas what this is all about?  Thanks for any pointers.  And hello from Chicago

uname -a


```
FreeBSD XXXXX.comcast.net. 8.0-STABLE FreeBSD 8.0-STABLE #0: Sun Feb 21 08:36:38 UTC 2010     [email]root@XXXXX.comcast.net[/email].:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386
```


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## J65nko (Feb 22, 2010)

Indeed looks like you end up in less. You can confirm by using *w*:

```
7:02AM  up  5:57, 6 users, load averages: 0.26, 0.33, 0.25
USER    TTY FROM              LOGIN@  IDLE WHAT
j65nko   C0 -                 1:05AM  5:56 -ksh 
j65nko   p0 :0.0              1:05AM     0 [color=blue]less /root/serial.log[/color] 
j65nko   p2 :0.0              1:29AM     0 ssh john@hydra.utp.xnet 
j65nko   p3 :0.0              3:40AM     0 -ksh 
j65nko   p4 :0.0              4:06AM    49 vi dfstat 
j65nko   p5 :0.0              7:02AM     0 w
```
This is on OBSD by the way 

What is in /root/.profile? In mine I have

```
export PAGER=/usr/bin/less
```
Could be you mistyped something there.


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## germanshephard (Feb 22, 2010)

Hi, Thank you for the reply, I had not thought to look at the PAGER variable but I actually realized the mistake

The problem was in my .cshrc file: I had set up an alias of which the tail end of was 


```
foo | less
```


This was apparently causing the behavior.  I had forgotten about it as I am primarily interested in better learning the ksh shell rather than the csh, and I have been switching between the two shells regularly.  

Dumb mistake on my part.........

Thanks again   : )


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## germanshephard (Feb 22, 2010)

Re: w command...


You were correct J65nko the listing was:


```
damek            pts/1    :0.0              7:04AM     8 less /root/.profile
```


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