I am trying to setup a few user accounts

%>adduser josh
%>passwd josh

then I enter password and that is all good, but from that account if I try to su to become super user I can but I can't run stuff. Like up2date must be run as root, but if I su from the account josh then I can't run it, but if I actually login as root (which I know is not a good idea, what I'm trying to avoid) then I can run up2date.

I'm trying to avoid having to pass the root password over the open world.

Could it be that these users don't have the right shells?

BTW, Red Hat 7.1 with plesk.

"su" switches users without running login scripts, so /usr/sbin, which is where up2date is located, is not in the search path. Try "su -" instead.

what does the - do?

the best way I could say it, is that it loads you as the root user with the enviromental variables enabled, ie it sets the apporpriate home directory and paths as the root user.

you could always use "su -l root"

cool, thanks alot guys.

Works well, prolly should have just done man su :)