Arch Linux

psych1610

Member

From: Florida

Registered: 2008-03-28

Posts: 15

Configuring User Group right after installation- question about groups

Hi everyone, my first post here and I'm real excited to be able to do it- even more excited that its not in the networking section

After 4 reinstalls, reading, and then re reading the Wiki for Beginners I finally got networking going!! If only through my LAN, my wireless will come next I guess.

Back to the topic, I made it to the "adduser" section of the Wiki without too much trouble. After entering the "adduser" command I enter the name I want for login, "dave".

So far I think I'm on track.

Afterwards I see "User ID ( 'UID') [defaults to next available]. While the Wiki did not mention this specifically it did say the defaults should be Ok. Should I have to enter anything in here? If so, what?

I found this website here: http://archux.com/page/what-do-after-yo … arch-linux but I don't see where it suggests what to fill in for that part.

If I "enter" through that I get "Initial group [users]" If I read that correctly that says the first group I belong to is called "users". Well, does that entail anything special? Or rather, what permissions do users have? Should I worry about it or just press enter again?

The next area is "Additional Groups (comma separated): I see in the Wiki where it recommends some groups to be a part of, specifically, these: audio, storage, wheel, video, optical, floppy, lp. The website referenced above recommends tty and disk on top of everything else above.

Well, I saw more groups and thought being a part of "camera" and "vboxusers" would come in handy seeing as how I will want to sync a camera and use virtualbox here eventually. Also, "power" and "network" seemed like they would come in handy.

Here are my questions I guess: Should I add anything to the UID and Initial group [users] part?

Do the above suggestions for groups sound ok? Overkill? Dangerous? Anything else I should add? Or maybe I'm just not thinking and most of them were taken care of by the "default" group I think I'm in.

Finally, "camera" and "vboxusers" are "do not exist" per the error

-Group 'camera' does not exist
-Group 'vboxusers' does not exist
-Please re-enter groups

Its at this point I thought I would drop on by. Any ideas why these groups do not exist or how to make them exist?

Sorry if I'm asking way too much here, just want to get it right.

I'd appreciate any help you can give me.

Dave

dmartins

Member

Registered: 2006-09-23

Posts: 360

Re: Configuring User Group right after installation- question about groups

First off, Welcome to Arch!

The users group should work just fine as your initial group. Basically, the users groups allows you to share folders amongst multiple logins on the machine. You can also create a group with the same name as your login and set that as your initial group (I believe this is how debian and ubuntu do it), but I am not sure the adduser command will create the group for you. You may have to use the groupadd command first.

Either way will work fine and if you're only using one login or are the only person really using the PC it doesn't really matter which way you choose!

As for the camera and vboxusers groups, they are created when certain packages are installed. vboxusers when you install VirtualBox and I think camera is created when installing gnome-volume-manager, but I cannot remember for sure.

bgc1954

Member

From: Edmonton, AB, Canada

Registered: 2006-03-14

Posts: 1,160

Re: Configuring User Group right after installation- question about groups

Yes, welcome to Arch

I know that if you add libgphoto2--if you're going to use a digital camera--the camera group is added.

The groups you mentioned are all fine and nothing dangerous, AFAIK, otherwise I don't think you'd find them in the beginners wiki.  You'll find, in general, that the documentation here is quite good.

Depending on what you do, you may find the need to add yourself to some other groups in the future--it's all up to you.

Last edited by bgc1954 (2008-03-28 14:13:03)

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Jack B

Member

Registered: 2006-06-27

Posts: 107

Website

Re: Configuring User Group right after installation- question about groups

The UID is a numerical identifier, it doesn't matter too much what it is (certain ones are reserved though) provided it is unique.  The default is just to pick the first unused number, which is fine.
The default group 'users' is also fine.

For optional groups:

[jack@jackslaptop ~]$ groups
wheel video audio optical storage users
[jack@jackslaptop ~]$

So I'm in the above groups.  I can do everything I need to, including use sudo (wheel - not set up by default), use the advanced features of my graphics card (video), play sound (audio), use CDs/DVDs (optical), and use USB storage (storage).

I don't have a printer (lp), camera, floppy drive, or virtualbox. I don't know what the tty group is for - I've never seen people use it, but disk allows direct write access to the hard drive as a block (rather than as a filesystem).  This allows you to (for example) copy random data over your entire drive. Probably not a good idea.

As a general rule, I wouldn't add yourself to either tty or disk unless you find a program which needs you too, and which you want to run as normal user, I don't know of any.

HTH
Jack

Mr.Elendig

#archlinux@freenode channel op

From: The intertubes

Registered: 2004-11-07

Posts: 4,094

Re: Configuring User Group right after installation- question about groups

My suggestion is this:
Main group: users
Supp. groups: video,audio,optical,storage

Those are relative sane "defaults" and shoud give your user access to most basic stuff, like sound and usb drives etc.

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psych1610

Member

From: Florida

Registered: 2008-03-28

Posts: 15

Re: Configuring User Group right after installation- question about groups

Thanks for all the suggestions here, I'm not yet home but I think I should have no problem setting up my user and groups for it. I'm the only one who will be using my system after all so it shouldn't be that big of a deal.

With all this help I think I should have my system configured in no time... or not. But its getting there thats half the fun. Right?

Thanks again.

Dave

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: Configuring User Group right after installation- question about groups

You still need to set the one user up with those groups, because udev will be assigning the ownership of devices to those groups. Don't consider hacking udev to change the ownership to "users"

Sjoden

Member

From: WA

Registered: 2007-08-16

Posts: 380

Website

Re: Configuring User Group right after installation- question about groups

The package libgphoto2 creates the group called camera, idk about the gnome one. If you are interested, here are my steps for installing on my laptop... http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/User:Sjoden. At the group section, camera, hal, and dbus are added later, after their respective packages.

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psych1610

Member

From: Florida

Registered: 2008-03-28

Posts: 15

Re: Configuring User Group right after installation- question about groups

You still need to set the one user up with those groups, because udev will be assigning the ownership of devices to those groups. Don't consider hacking udev to change the ownership to "users" wink

Haha, I don't even know what udev is right now, much less would I ever consider hacking it

I'll do it by the book for now, then when I wanna experiment I'll see what I can do about udev and all that fun stuff.

Thanks for the tip though

Dave