[NBLUG/talk] Re: talk Digest, Vol 20, Issue 28

Chris Palmer chris at eff.org
Tue Nov 29 16:23:54 PST 2005


Art Hampton writes:

> Criminy. I installed Slackware and attempted to access my cdrom. I'm told
> that only root can open the cdrom. OK, so I log on as root and attempt to
> change the permissions to allow the lowly user (me) to open the cdrom, and I
> can't figure out how to do it.

Did you try chmod(1) and chgrp(1)? A good thing to do is to create a
"console" group, and make console devices owned, readable and writable
by that group, and then add your account to that group.

If you don't want to use the command line, log into your graphical
environment as root, get properties on the cdrom file (/dev/cdrom or
whatever), and change the permissions/ownership that way.

If you are having trouble figuring out what the name of the CDROM device
file is, use dmesg(1). It will list your CDROM drive along with all the
other hardware you found. This is probably quickest:

    $ dmesg | grep -i cdrom

Some desktop environment or other (GNOME, KDE) probably has some
graphical hardware browser that is easier to grok than dmesg. I don't
know.

I realize I am only proving your point, but:

> just too much effort to be able to open the GD cdrom. Give me
> strength, or better yet, W2K.

Are you running Windows as Administrator, or is your user account a
member of a privileged group? Almost certainly.

And turn off Autorun. ;)

http://www.eff.org/IP/DRM/Sony-BMG/

> I suppose I'd best put on my flame retardant outfit...

Not at all. Your claims are perfectly legitimate. The thing is, the
tradeoffs are different, and the Linux/Unix way is better in certain
circumstances. A safely-configured Windows system is likely to be at
least as cumbersome as Linux.


-- 
http://www.eff.org/about/staff/#chris_palmer

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