Re: Referring bug #166718 and the initial groups issue to the TC
On Wed, 31 Mar 2004 14:15:00 -0500 (EST), Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org> said:
> The problem is fairly simple. Some of our users actually want to
> use their systems once they get it installed. Particularly, they'd
> like to be able to do things like play sound, access their floppy
> drives and cdroms, etc. Currently, to do that, you need to be added
> to groups that have access to devices. I think some of this comes
> from the FHS rather than just decisions internal to Debian.
> Perhaps when Debian and the FHS originally made this decision, users
> could be expected to simply add themselves to groups if they noticed
> they needed the permissions associated with these groups. However
> as Debian has gained appeal to a wider audience and as peoples'
> expectations of usability increase, users want more reasonable
> default behavior.
> The proposal in bug #166718 and the bugs merged with it is for the
> initial user to be added to some set of groups. Karl does not like
> this proposal because it only solves the problem for the initial
> user. That's great until you actually start to take advantage of
> the fact your Debian system is multi-user.
It seems to me that this ought to be local policy. Can you
explain to me how the proposed solutions take site policy into
account? Would it be feasible instead have a simple way of enabling
one or more users (perhaps a site wide list of users, with exceptions
for services) to use a specific service? Would there be security
issues involved in giving wholesale access to hardware resources?
Traditionally, UNIX has not been in the practice of
automatically adding users to groups, and I think we need to be
careful if we decide to break from universal practice.
manoj
--
Why did the Roman Empire collapse? What is the Latin for office
automation?
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
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