Re: Q: User access to hardware peripherals - preferred method?

[Michael Stutz <stutz@dsl.org>]

On Wed, 7 Apr 1999, James Mastros wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 07, 1999 at 08:19:47PM -0400, Michael Stutz wrote:
> > This works for the CD-ROM drive after doing "chgroup audio /dev/cdrom;
> > chgroup audio /dev/hdc" as root (should I have done that?) but doing "mount
> > /dev/fd0 /floppy" as a user still gets "mount: only root can do that":
> > 
> > $ mount /dev/fd0 /floppy/
> > mount: only root can do that
> > $ ls -l /dev/fd0
> > brw-rw----   1 root     floppy     2,   0 May 27  1997 /dev/fd0
> > $ groups
> > m dialout floppy audio dip

> Is /floppy listed in /etc/fstab with the "user" flag (IE "/dev/fd0 /3.5 auto
> defaults,noauto,user 0 0")?


/floppy isn't listed in /etc/fstab at all. So should I add an entry in
/etc/fstab for /floppy?

Another question, then -- is this something that should be put in /etc/fstab
when the e2fsprogs package is first installed? I tried this on three Debian
2.1 machines and all three had the same problem -- first, I do this as root:

# addgroup foo floppy
# addgroup foo dip
# addgroup foo audio

Then when user foo next logs in, foo can do "pon" and "poff" with no
problem, but foo still can't mount the floppy or mount the cd-rom drive (or
play cd audio).

Only after doing "chgroup audio /dev/cdrom; chgroup audio /dev/hdc" as root
can user foo then play audio cds, but non-root users still can't use the
floppy drive. 

I'd like to do this the right (preferred Debian) way, though. Is chgrouping
/dev/cdrom and what it points to the "right" way to do it for the CD-ROM? What
about the floppy -- is the "right" way to do it to add a line in /etc/fstab
for the floppy?