Niki Kovacs wrote:

> Hi,
>
> When adding users to the system with 'adduser', until recently,
> I've been using these groups:
>
> audio,video,cdrom,floppy,scanner
>
> As far as i understand, 12.0 recommends to use also the plugdev
> group for automatic mounting of removable media.
>
> Are the other groups still OK? What would you recommend for a
> normal desktop user?
>
> Niki

From /etc/login.defs

# Note that users are added to these default groups only when
# logging into a shell with /bin/login, not when using a login
# manager such as kdm. In that case, users who should have
# hardware access must be added to the appropriate groups
# when the user is added with adduser or useradd, or by editing
# /etc/group directly.
#
CONSOLE_GROUPS floppy:audio:cdrom:videolugdev

See also Robin Workman's post "Slackware 12.0 and HAL usage - Read
this!" on this issue.

HTH
Joerg
--
For email use g m x d o t n e t

Niki Kovacs (mickey@mouse.com) writes:
> Hi,
>
> When adding users to the system with 'adduser', until recently, I've been
> using these groups:
>
> audio,video,cdrom,floppy,scanner
>
> As far as i understand, 12.0 recommends to use also the plugdev group for
> automatic mounting of removable media.
>
> Are the other groups still OK? What would you recommend for a normal
> desktop user?
>
> Niki


You do realize that the groups are merely administrative issues.

When you've got a Big System, some users may require more capability
than you want to give every user, so you can put them in a group.

And since you don't want to hand out everything to everyone, you can
use multiple groups to be selective, so user A can get access to the floppy
drive (which isn't a great example since on Big Systems the users would
never have access to the hardware), while user B can have access to the
CDROM, while user C can have access to both by adding them to both groups,
while all the rest of the users have no access at all to these things.

It's different with a single user system. But for the potential danger,
you could run as root, but being a user makes it that much harder for
you to do damage. But a single user likely wants access to that hardware,
and there is no conflict in letting yourself have that access.

Hence the multiple groups on that single system aren't really needed.
You could just cook up a new group that does everything but the dangerous
stuff, and put yourself in that group. It makes it all easier to keep
track, since you don't have to wonder if access to the CDROM should be
in this group or that group.

The only reason to use multiple groups on that single user system is
convention.

Michael