[PLUG] Scanner - was Kooka Help

[Rogan Creswick]

On 9/17/07, Derek Loree <drl at drloree.com> wrote:
>
> Add yourself to the "disk" group:
>
> adduser richard disk
>

I don't think this is a good solution.  On my machine, the disk group
has write access to all the drive devices in /dev, meaning that any
user in that group could wreak havoc on the filesystems without any OS
protection.  (This machine also has a "scanner" group, although I
don't have a scanner.)

I'd say changing the permissions on the device is a fair bit safer --
I occasionally cat things to devices directly to trouble shoot (eg:
cat a wav to /dev/dsp to determine if sound works, or catting a pdf to
a printer... etc.)  I'd really hate to hose my filesystem to a copy of
Yngwie Malmseem's Concerto for Electric Guitar.

Generally speaking, Derek's suggestion is sound -- but in this case
the group probably shouldn't be "disk".  (Of course, on the machine
with scanner issues "disk" could be a benign group, like "scanner" on
ubuntu... but I doubt it.)

--Rogan