[Poll] Changing permissions on raw1394

[Andrew Hunter]

Hey everyone!

If you have not heard about it already, the Ubuntu Studio team is 
looking at creating an app that would easily allow users to change 
common settings that they may be currently editing by hand.[1]

One of the features that we are considering is changing the permissions 
on raw1394 /etc/udev/rules.d/40-permissions.rules from disk to audio or 
video. This is a necessary change currently to enable firewire based 
devices to work as a regular user, such as firewire sound cards and 
video cameras.

The other alternative solution is to add the user to group "disk", 
though this may also cause problems.

The issue with this is that it creates a rather large security risk for 
the system, in that any device on the firewire bus can run with root 
privileges. This risk is less of an issue for stand-alone machines that 
do not use Ethernet over firewire, but is still something to consider.

I would like to stress that it _will not_ be changed by default. All 
that we are considering is providing a more accessible way to modify 
those settings.

In the future, when Ubuntu and by extension Ubuntu Studio move to the 
new firewire stack in the kernel, this issue will be an non-issue. The 
new kernel stack provides much finer granularity and control over 
permissions on specific devices.

The question then I am posing to you guys is this: How many of you 
already change this setting by hand?


Thanks,

Andrew

[1] 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-studio-devel/2007-November/000095.html