pppd right settings for users
Hi folks,
during my experiences with several login tools with gui I remarked a little
issue which I offer for discussion.
I remarked, when a login is starting, the user is asked for the root password
when the process pppd started. So I checked the situation.
On my system /usr/bin/pppd is set to root:dig (is this still so?, my system
was installed about 5 years ago and was only regularly upgraded).
Normal users are in group "dig" (and "dialout") by default.
For normal users using the root password is no good idea, so I searched for a
solution. The best and easiest tools for unexperienced tools are "umtsmon"
(which is my favourite, but needs older libs) and "sakis3g" (which is state of
the art). Packages are for both available, as I made one for the second one.
The other solutions are crippled (IMHO) for unexprienced users. All the
wvdial.conf and editing files and so on, are crap for unexprienced users.
The solution are these:
For umtsmon and sakis3g set the excecutables below /usr/bin/ to root:dig.
This works very well without any problems and I see no security problem with
it.
When thinking about ownership settings, IMO the settings of /usr/bin/pppd are
not set correctly - please entlighten me: I think, the group of pppd should
not be "dig", but "dialout". Dialout, as its name says, is that, what it does:
it is diealling out and that is exactly what pppd does - it dials out.
Maybe this should be thought over, to make things easier.
Personal statement:
It is a pity, that "umtsmon" depends on old qt4-libs, which is tricky to
install on debian. Still I found none, who were able to compile a package for
actual libs. I am still working on it, but it is hard for me, as I am only
very very little experienced with this stuff.
For sakis3g things were easier for me: I created a package and uploaded it to
mentors.debian.org. The documentation is being optimized, and I added the hint
related to the root:dig-settings.
At the moment I am stuck with the package, that shall automatically set the
correct rights at installation. Postinst settings do not work, but I hope to
be able to solve this problem too. Help is welcome.
That is the situation. As it is already all working fine here, I think we
should find an easy solution for all the other happy but unexperienced debian
users. What do you think?
Best regards
Hans-J. Ullrich
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