Frank Cox wrote:
The keyboard/monitor that's locally attached to the system (server).
What if you don't use that (or the box doesn't have them) and instead
always connect via X/freenx/ssh?
Then you're not using a console.
and what does it have to do with a unix-like system?
Among other things, the console user has (or can have) special permissions that
are set by /etc/security/console.perms and /etc/security/console.perms.d/
Seems like a really, really bad idea for an operating system that
permits remote access and doesn't care where you are.
That is one of the reasons behind having a console. By definition, a remote
access terminal session is not a console. Unix/Linux definitely does care if
you're local or remote when assigning console permissions as described above.
No, fedora, udev, or some recent change cares about this. Traditional
unix would run on boxes with no concept of a local console and never
changed permissions on anything, including the device nodes in /dev
without being explicitly told to do so by someone with appropriate
rights. I understand the problem this tries to solve by guessing that
someone near the attached keyboard might be the owner of the machine,
but it makes the system very single-user-Microsoft-ish in my opinion.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
