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#1 2010-02-26 09:06:47

xCrucialDudex
Member
Registered: 2007-08-19
Posts: 144

Non-privileged user groups and examples of tasks

Wiki says that normal, non-privileged users can and should be given membership in the following groups:

audio - for tasks involving sound card and related software
floppy - for access to a floppy if applicable
lp - for managing printing tasks
optical - for managing tasks pertaining to the optical drive(s)
storage - for managing storage devices
video - for video tasks and hardware acceleration
wheel - for using sudo
power - used w/ power options (e.g.: shutdown with power button)

What I'm interested is the examples of the typical tasks (besides mentioned on Wiki) that require membership in these groups: storage, video, power, camera, games.

If someone could break it down nicely I would be much obliged. Thank you.

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#2 2010-02-26 09:21:13

Runiq
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2008-10-29
Posts: 1,053

Re: Non-privileged user groups and examples of tasks

Storage allows you to (un)mount removable media as user in graphical file managers (when HAL is involved).
Power allows you t resume/suspend/shutdown/reboot as user.
Some games set the permissions on their executables so that a non-member of the games group can't start the game.

For the others, I have no idea unfortunately. sad By the way, the groups are to be deprecated in the (rather far?) future since you are supposed to get proper permissions when you need them. I think ConsoleKit is involved in that IIRC.

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#3 2010-02-26 09:37:39

xCrucialDudex
Member
Registered: 2007-08-19
Posts: 144

Re: Non-privileged user groups and examples of tasks

Runiq wrote:

Storage allows you to (un)mount removable media as user in graphical file managers (when HAL is involved).
Power allows you t resume/suspend/shutdown/reboot as user.
Some games set the permissions on their executables so that a non-member of the games group can't start the game.

For the others, I have no idea unfortunately. sad By the way, the groups are to be deprecated in the (rather far?) future since you are supposed to get proper permissions when you need them. I think ConsoleKit is involved in that IIRC.

Thanks for a quick reply. That's an interesting idea to grant privileges dynamically on demand. Haven't heard of it yet. Where can I read about it more?

Last edited by xCrucialDudex (2010-02-26 09:38:07)

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#4 2010-02-26 09:46:10

Runiq
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2008-10-29
Posts: 1,053

Re: Non-privileged user groups and examples of tasks

xCrucialDudex wrote:

Thanks for a quick reply. That's an interesting idea to grant privileges dynamically on demand. Haven't heard of it yet. Where can I read about it more?

Well, if I had reference, I'd have posted a link big_smile I've read it somewhere around the forums here, looking for a specific thread ATM.

Edit: E.g. JGC said it in this thread.

Last edited by Runiq (2010-02-26 09:47:27)

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#5 2010-02-26 09:56:03

xCrucialDudex
Member
Registered: 2007-08-19
Posts: 144

Re: Non-privileged user groups and examples of tasks

Hmm... intersting. Thanks for the link! smile

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#6 2010-02-26 12:00:37

dptkby
Member
Registered: 2009-07-02
Posts: 64

Re: Non-privileged user groups and examples of tasks

In my experience, the handling of groups is quite inconsistent; often you don't need group membership and often permissions are handled by some entirely different mechanism (the *kits come to mind).

Currently, the only groups I'm a member of are wheel, audio and users. I do remember that audio is actually required. Everything else is working as expected without group memberships.

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#7 2010-02-26 12:06:55

xCrucialDudex
Member
Registered: 2007-08-19
Posts: 144

Re: Non-privileged user groups and examples of tasks

dptkby wrote:

In my experience, the handling of groups is quite inconsistent; often you don't need group membership and often permissions are handled by some entirely different mechanism (the *kits come to mind).

Currently, the only groups I'm a member of are wheel, audio and users. I do remember that audio is actually required. Everything else is working as expected without group memberships.

Pretty much true hence my original inquiry.

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#8 2010-02-26 14:49:00

Surgat_
Member
Registered: 2007-08-08
Posts: 317

Re: Non-privileged user groups and examples of tasks

'camera' group is needed for accessing photo cameras through the libgphoto2 library. No idea about 'video' though

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