On Wed 09 Nov 2016 at 09:48:01 +0100, to...@tuxteam.de wrote: > On Tue, Nov 08, 2016 at 08:39:51PM +0000, Brian wrote: > > On Tue 08 Nov 2016 at 14:41:45 -0500, Stefan Monnier wrote: > > > > > >>>>>>> *HOWEVER* parted requires root privileges. That is not acceptable. > > > >>>>>>> Suggestions? > > > >>>>>>> TIA > > > > Futzing with partitions is the admin's job. > > > > > > Could be, but it's not (g)parted's job to enforce these kinds of rules: > > > that's what Unix permissions (and Linux's capabilities) are for. > > > > > > It's OK to add a warning and prompt the user to make sure he really > > > means to do that, but there's no point *preventing* the user from > > > shooting his own foot with this tool if he can do it with other > > > tools anyway. > > > > Users here get no opportunity to shoot themselves or anyone else in the > > foot. Access to raw disks is over my dead body. So I do not understand > > your point. > > C'mon. Cut the drama. Dead bodies and that.
When I wrote that I had in mind the advice to put a user in the disk group to get 'lsblk -f' to give a wanted output. It will work. It also gives the user the opportunity to completely destroy the system with dd. > As if "raw disk" were some kind of sacred stuff. In my case they are > simple files on disk (disk images). Shall I have to become root every > time I have to write a partition table to that? No. I just use fdisk. > > It's the job of file (device) permissions to ensure that. Or are you > going to patch around bash's redirection operator too, to keep "users" > from shooting themselves in the foot by issuing > > echo "mumble" > /dev/sda2 > > Not really. Raw disk access to a device the user does not own *is* sacred. Access to a device the user does own is up to the user. Applications should not prevent that legitimate access taking place. Thank you for raising the disk image situation. -- Brian.
