Re: adding a user to a group

[Kent West <westk@acu.edu>]

xucaen@yahoo.com wrote:

> Hi, How do I add a user (myself) to the group that can access the CD-ROM and CD-RW drives?
> I am unfamiliar with how to do this. I read the adduser man page and it does say that it
> can add a user to a group, but I don't know what the groups are for CD-ROM and CD-RW.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Jim
>
>
>  
Assuming your CD-ROM drive is on /dev/cdrom:

EnJaeLove[westk]:/home/westk> ls -l /dev/cdrom
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            3 Aug 11  2001 /dev/cdrom -> hdc

So now I look at /dev/hdc.

EnJaeLove[westk]:/home/westk> ls -l /dev/hdc 
brw-rw----    1 root     disk      22,   0 May 12  2001 /dev/hdc

So, to have read/write access to the CDROM drive, I'd need to be in the 
"disk" group. However, looking quickly at the permissions on the hard 
drive at /dev/hda:

EnJaeLove[westk]:/home/westk> ls -l /dev/hda
brw-rw----    1 root     disk       3,   0 May 12  2001 /dev/hda

which means that if I put this user into the "disk" group, he'll have 
direct read/write access to the raw hard drive device. Hmm, do I really 
want to do that? If that's not an issue, just add the user to the "disk: 
group. This can be done manually by editing "/etc/group", by modifying 
the line:

disk:x:6:

to something like:

disk:x:6:westk

or it can be done with the "adduser" or "addgroup" command. I never use 
the "adduser" command for this, so I won't discuss it. To add the user 
"west" to the group "disk", you'd issue a command like:

addgroup westk disk

That user, "west", would need to log out (if he's currently logged in), 
and then log back in before the changes take effect. He can run the 
command "groups" to see what groups he's a member of.


--
Kent West (westk@acu.edu)
====
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