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

[Renaud (Ron) Olgiati]

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.
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