On Sun, Feb 25, 2001 at 11:49:18AM -0500, Chun Kit Edwin Lau wrote: > Hi everyone, > > A while ago, I saw a posting saying that if, say, I want to access > audio stuff, I should add group audio to my normal user account. By the > same arguement, for cdrom, hd, floppy, etc, I should add them to my normal > user account. After a while, I find myself almost like the root who can > access everything. so is that normal? or is there a better way to do this?
cdrom and audio are quite normal groups to be a member of, they let you access sound hardware and read the raw cd (so you can play audio cds) there isn't much threat here. only trusted users should be a member of audio since they can activate the microphone and record anything going on in the room the computer is located. group floppy is only needed if you need to format floppies or dd images. it also gives you access to the tape devices. never ever ever add yourself to group `disk' this is intended for backup daemons who need to read the raw disk devices. but having group disk makes you root, you can totally destroy everything with that group. (IMO disk devices should be mode 640 root.disk instead of 660 root.disk, since backup programs need not write to the raw partitions only read) -- Ethan Benson http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/
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