USB permissions for educational robots

[Paul Fox]

james wrote:
 > On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 04:57:10PM -0500, Paul Fox wrote:
 > > i would like to propose giving user-level read/write access to any
 > > USB device which isn't an auto-mounted filesystem.  perhaps an easier
 > > rule would be, any non-storage USB device.
 > > 
 > > can anyone think of reasons that this would be unacceptable?  (i assume,
 > > but don't know, that this would not be hard to implement.
 > 
 > devices that provide storage interfaces are likely to be the next
 > barrier, and so all we have done is accept the non-storage devices now
 > and create more pain later.
 > 
 > what is the reason for not allowing user-level read/write access to any
 > storage USB device?

only that the they're probably already mounted under /media, with the
obvious consequences if you write directly to the device.  that's why
my first suggestion above took whether it's being auto-mounted into
consideration.

paul

 > 
 > i recall setuid used to be a risk, but i thought that got fixed with
 > mount options that suppress it.
 > 
 > -- 
 > James Cameron
 > http://quozl.linux.org.au/
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 > Devel at lists.laptop.org
 > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

=---------------------
 paul fox, pgf at laptop.org