The problem isn't with eject; eject is working properly... I think. The permissions for /dev/sdb1 (on my machine, that's the first USB disk's ID) are 660, and it's owned by root:disk. I can add myself to the 'disk' group, but that gives me raw access to any fixed disk on the system, and I don't think that's a permission that should be tightly bound to being able to safely remove a USB stick.
I don't think that eject should be suid root; Ubuntu manages permissions for access to the CD drive by users being in group 'cdrom', and the CD device being mode 660, owned by root:cdrom. The following bit suggests that the disk should belong to the 'root:plugdev' group, which the standard config tools *do* provide access for. http://qblog.remarqs.net/2008/05/13/usb-drive-annoyance-with-kde-and- udev/ If I make USB drive owned by group 'plugdev', I can easily eject it: $ sudo chown root:plugdev sdb sdb1 $ ls sd* -ld brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 0 2008-11-24 13:43 sda brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 1 2008-11-24 13:43 sda1 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 2 2008-11-24 13:43 sda2 brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 5 2008-11-24 13:43 sda5 brw-rw---- 1 root plugdev 8, 16 2009-01-06 13:48 sdb brw-rw---- 1 root plugdev 8, 17 2009-01-06 13:48 sdb1 $ eject -v sdb1 eject: device name is `sdb1' eject: expanded name is `/dev/sdb1' eject: `/dev/sdb1' is mounted at `/media/disk' eject: unmounting device `/dev/sdb1' from `/media/disk' eject: `/dev/sdb1' is a multipartition device eject: trying to eject `/dev/sdb1' using CD-ROM eject command eject: CD-ROM eject command succeeded On the other hand, according to bug 128257, the 'plugdev' group is deprecated, since the above configuration means that anyone on the system with plugdev privileges has full access to the USB stick. Perhaps the best solution would be to create the device node either chown'd to or chgrp'd to the primary group of the user on whose behalf it's mounted... but then again, not all USB storage is attached solely for the benefit of a single user, and some *should* actually be chown'd root:disk like any internally-attached device would be. So perhaps the problem is that the system is mounting the USB drive with bad permissions... and perhaps the problem is that eject shouldn't be trying to run 'eject' commands on USB sticks--does the 'eject' command actually do anything that simply unmounting the device doesn't, or is it only sensible for USB-attached optical drives? I'm adding a hal task in case it's their issue, and marking both tasks 'new' for now. ** Changed in: eject (Ubuntu) Status: Incomplete => New -- eject command fails with "unable to open" error https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/235202 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
