[Mageia-discuss] Making the serial port available to all

Mon Sep 17 16:05:50 CEST 2012

On Monday 17 Sep 2012 08:44 my mailbox was graced by a message from Frank 
+Griffin who wrote:
+> > I think I finally found a simpler solution:
+
+> You should enter a bug report for this, as there is probably more going 
+> on here than simple Unix permissions.
+ 
+> When dinosaurs roamed the earth, Unix systems were multi-user, and it 
+> was expected that the sysadmin would use the groups to parcel out device 
+> permissions.  As Linux distros have moved more and more towards 
+> single-user systems, permission mechanisms have changed.
+
+> /dev devices are now created dynamically (as already pointed out) 
+> according to rules supplied by the packages you install.  The theory is 
+> that you only end up creating /dev nodes for devices you will actually 
+> use, rather than the cast of thousands that used to be created 
+> statically for every possible need.
+
+> And access to common devices like CD drives and the audio system is (I 
+> believe) done dynamically now as well, by packages like polkit and 
+> systemd, which take their configuration from places other than /etc/group.
+
+> As a USB tty is not a common device, it may well have fallen through the 
+> cracks of these new mechanisms, and should probably be addressed there.
+
+I beg to disagree with the last, given that the group attribution for 
+/dev/ttyUSB0 (for the USB serial port adapter) is the same as that for the 
+common or garden serial ports at /dev/ttyS* 
+All of those belong to the dialout group, probably leftover from the days when 
+the serial ports conected to the modem (?).
+
+Filled the bug report.
+ 
+Cheers,
+ 
+Ron.
+-- 
+                    Deux étions, et n'avions qu'un coeur.
+                                       -- François Villon
+                                    
+                   -- http://www.olgiati-in-paraguay.org --
+
+