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Re: Incorrect group on /dev/fd0? "disk" vs "floppy"



On Thu 17 Dec 2015 at 21:55:48 +0100, Sven Arvidsson wrote:

> On Thu, 2015-12-17 at 18:56 +0000, Brian wrote:
> > I don't think any of the solutions do help you to write to a raw
> > device, whether it be a floppy or a USB stick. Writing a Debian ISO
> > to USB is not uncommon here and I do not appreciate having to be
> > root to do it.  A mistake in one letter in the command could ruin
> > your day.
> 
> dd'ing an image to a raw device does require root. 

Which raises the question of what benefit there is to the installer
putting the first created user in group floppy.

> > Those who do not have root privileges don't even have the
> > opportunity to wipe their hard disk, or dd an installation image to
> > a removable device to pass on to an interested friend. If the
> > thinking behind the change had been *explained* one could be more
> > sypathetic to it. 
> 
> The rest here does not, changing labels, formatting, creating
> partitions, mounting images etc. works with udisks.

udisksctl takes care of mounting from the command line. I'm not aware of
similar commands for the remaining three operations.
 
> Writing ISO to USB could also be done through udisks presumably?

I imagine so, but have never tried. A 91-permissions.rules file in
/etc/udev/rules.d

with

  SUBSYSTEM=="block", ATTRS{removable}=="1",      GROUP="floppy"

is easy enough.

If you cat, dd or cp to a removable raw device as root a good habit to
cultivate is to read from the device first and watch for the blinking
LED:

  dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/null count=100000

This tip is courtesy of

  https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/05/msg00748.html


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