[Bug 385375] Re: Purpose of the fuse group

[Petar Bogdanovic]

Also, while mount.fuse(8) talks about fusermount being sgid fuse, in
Ubuntu 14.04 fusermount is actually suid root.

I could just chmod a+r /etc/fuse.conf but that doesn't feel right.

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Title:
  Purpose of the fuse group

Status in fuse package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  In Jaunty, users are no longer added to the fuse group by default.

  This causes error messages like this when one attempts to use fuse:

  $ python /usr/share/doc/python-fuse/examples/hello.py -s -f -o allow_other ~/tmp
  fusermount: failed to open /etc/fuse.conf: Permission denied
  fusermount: option allow_other only allowed if 'user_allow_other' is set in /etc/fuse.conf
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/usr/share/doc/python-fuse/examples/hello.py", line 92, in <module>
      main()
    File "/usr/share/doc/python-fuse/examples/hello.py", line 89, in main
      server.main()
    File "/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/fuse.py", line 713, in main
      main(**d)
  fuse.FuseError: filesystem initialization failed

  Note, however that it is still possible to use fuse filesystems. In
  some cases the error message is shown and the mount proceeds anyway,
  while in others even the error message is hidden:

  $ groups
  nikratio adm dialout cdrom plugdev lpadmin admin sambashare
  $ ls tmp/
  $ python /usr/share/doc/python-fuse/examples/hello.py tmp/
  $ ls tmp
  hello
  $ fusermount -u tmp

  I think something is wrong with this. If users do not need to be in
  the fuse group to use fuse, why is /etc/fuse.conf only readable by
  members of this group? Or, putting it the other way around, why am I
  allowed to use fuse if I'm not in the fuse group?

  This may or may not be related to bug #339889 (I don't quite
  understand the last comment and why it was set to invalid).

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