On Fri, 7 Dec 2007, Karl Larsen wrote: > Robert P. J. Day wrote: > > but there's a *reason* it's done this way, karl. typically, when > > you start adding new users, you're not going to add them to the > > system groups. > I was not adding a new user or group. that's not the point. you were complaining originally that you couldn't see all the users and groups on the system. and i explained why that's actually a good thing -- because, for the most part, you shouldn't *need* to see those users or groups, unless you're doing something unusual. if you truly need to see them, then it's a simple mouse click. but unless you do, there's no need to have them cluttering up your dialog box. do you see the point i'm trying to make? > Why did someone invent "usermod"? And when you do a ls -l on > /dev/ttyS0, the first serial port you notice: > > [root@k5di ~]# ls -al /dev/ttyS0 > crw-rw---- 1 root uucp 4, 64 2007-12-07 04:52 /dev/ttyS0 > [root@k5di ~]# > > The only way I can ever use Com1 is to be root or belong to the uucp > Group. not necessarily. depending on how you access that port, it might have its attributes changed to match yours automatically. from my system: $ ls -l /dev/console crw------- 1 rpjday root 5, 1 2007-12-06 03:17 /dev/console notice how i'm the owner of /dev/console? i never changed that ownership -- that was done for me based on the fact that that's how i logged in. and if you run an application that needs to access the serial port, that *application* might do that for you automatically as well. if you truly want to access the serial port directly, then, yes, you might need to change its attributes, but that doesn't mean you *need* to add yourself to the uucp group -- it just means you need to change the owner or group on the serial port temporarily. that's probably going to be a lot easier than adding yourself to system groups. > > you generally need a really good reason to add a user to a > > system group. > > > I and many others will find really good reasons. no, karl ... you might find *a* reason. but it won't be a good one. as i pointed out above, there is a much easier way to accomplish what you're trying to do. rday ======================================================================== Robert P. J. Day Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA http://crashcourse.ca ========================================================================
