On Thu 17 Dec 2015 at 21:55:48 +0100, Sven Arvidsson wrote:
> On Thu, 2015-12-17 at 18:56 +0000, Brian wrote:
> > I don't think any of the solutions do help you to write to a raw
> > device, whether it be a floppy or a USB stick. Writing a Debian ISO
> > to USB is not uncommon here and I do not appreciate having to be
> > root to do it. A mistake in one letter in the command could ruin
> > your day.
>
> dd'ing an image to a raw device does require root.
Which raises the question of what benefit there is to the installer
putting the first created user in group floppy.
> > Those who do not have root privileges don't even have the
> > opportunity to wipe their hard disk, or dd an installation image to
> > a removable device to pass on to an interested friend. If the
> > thinking behind the change had been *explained* one could be more
> > sypathetic to it.
>
> The rest here does not, changing labels, formatting, creating
> partitions, mounting images etc. works with udisks.
udisksctl takes care of mounting from the command line. I'm not aware of
similar commands for the remaining three operations.
> Writing ISO to USB could also be done through udisks presumably?
I imagine so, but have never tried. A 91-permissions.rules file in
/etc/udev/rules.d
with
SUBSYSTEM=="block", ATTRS{removable}=="1", GROUP="floppy"
is easy enough.
If you cat, dd or cp to a removable raw device as root a good habit to
cultivate is to read from the device first and watch for the blinking
LED:
dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/null count=100000
This tip is courtesy of
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/05/msg00748.html
