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

[Jiri Baum <jiri@baum.com.au>]

Hello,

Michael Stutz:
> 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":

Only root is allowed to mount/umount things by default; users are only
allowed to do for things listed in /etc/fstab as "user".

> $ 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

That means you can read and write the raw floppy (which can be useful
occasionally, but not often). To be able to mount it, you need the
appropriate line in /etc/fstab.


Jiri