Re: [LAD] OT: mkdosfs as normal user

On Tue, 2008-11-11 at 23:30 -0600, David M. Creswick wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Nov 2008 09:53:17 +0700
> Patrick Shirkey <pshirkey@boosthardware.com> wrote:
>
> > Joern Nettingsmeier wrote:
> > > Patrick Shirkey wrote:
> > >
> > >> Hi,
> > >>
> > >> I can't find anything online that gives me a way to run /sbin/mkdosfs as
> > >> a normal user.
> > >>
> > >> Is it just that I need to add the user to the mkdosfs group or something
> > >> similar?
> > >>
> > >
> > > are you sure the program itself prevents that? my guess is it's the
> > > device you want to create the file on.
> > >
> > > should be a matter of creating a new group disk_removable or something,
> > > writing an udev rule to give it r/w access to all floppies and usb
> > > sticks and add yourself to that group.
> > >
> > >
> > Thanks for the tip.
> >
> > I'm working on it now.
> >
> > However this seems like a major oversight from a Linux on the desktop
> > perspective that you need to be root user to format a removable disk. It
> > would make sense that Nautilus or Konqueror would have built in support
> > by now.
> >
> > Does anyone have experience with any distros/apps allowing this as
> > normal user?
> >
> > It seems like it should be a no brainer.
> >
>
> I think Joern is correct in that all you need is read+write permissions
> on the device node. Under debian etch, the group is set to "floppy" for
> device nodes of removable usb storage devices. I imagine other distros
> do something similar. So the user should just have to be a member of
> the floppy (or equivalent) group to run mkdosfs on the device.
>
>

Thanks for the tip. I ran this command:

/usr/sbin/usermod -a -G floppy username

On Fedora9 at least the floppy group does not control removeable disks.

I also tried the disk group but nothing...

Any other suggestions?

Yesterday I was looking at adding an exception to hal but I couldn't
find the mode key syntax.

I was thinking of something like this:

        <deviceinfo version="0.2">
           <device>
            <match key="@block.storage_device:storage.bus" string="usb">
              <merge key="volume.mode" type="int">666</merge>
            </match>
          </device>
        </deviceinfo>

-- 
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd
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