On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 09:03:50AM +0100, Neil Bothwick wrote > I don't understand, why are you using sudo to run pmount when its core > purpose is to be run by normal users? > > % whatis pmount > pmount (1) - mount arbitrary hotpluggable devices as normal user
A normal user can pumount *WHAT THAT SAME USER* has pmounted. Now try for a general solution. If you're the only user on the system, it's probably safe to keep an open xterm logged in to root. The problem is that inserting a USB device sets off a kernel event, that is passed to mdev, which looks for a script name in /etc/mdev.conf. If a script is found that matches the device spec (i.e. sd[a-z].*), e.g. my automount script, then the script is launched *AS ROOT*. Given that root has mounted the device, only root can unmount it. E.g. when root pmounts a device and normal user tries to pumount it, I get... waltdnes@d531 ~ $ pumount sdb1 Error: device /dev/sdb1 was not mounted by you Note also that the automount script has to first create a directory in /media, before mounting it. Since /media is drwxr-xr-x the directory has to be created by root, or else I have to open up /media to writing and directory creation by all users. The most secure approach is to have the system do things as root without user intervention, as much as possible. -- Walter Dnes <waltd...@waltdnes.org> I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications
