USB external disk write permission. What have I done wrong?

[Rashkae]

Derek Broughton wrote:
> Karl Larsen wrote:
> 
>>     Well I KNOW you can chown from the /dev/ address because I did it on
>> MY USB hard drive. Worked fine and did not stop automount. Where do you
>> get your info that it is risky to use /dev/???
> 
> On a single user system, it probably isn't that risky.  You either have
> access to a device, or you don't and then you want to change either
> permissions or ownership.  But as a general principle, somebody went to
> some trouble to decide what the ownership of every device should be, and
> when you change that, you risk preventing other users from accessing the
> device.
> 
> On top of that, changing permissions or ownership of /dev nodes with chown,
> chgrp and chmod is purely temporary - those settings are made by udev, so
> unless you change the relevant udev rule, they get reset when you reboot.

chaning ownership on /dev devices will also give users write permission
on the raw device.. This is generally bad, since there is little reason
why a user should write directly to the device.  You need to do so as
root to format or otherwise do low level service to the device, but in a
sane world, normal processes should not have permission to modify a file
system device outside of the file system layer.  Especially when said
file system might be mounted!

And where I get my info?  (yes I know Derek, this is Karl, sorry I'm
replying in your reply).  My gods man, you got some balls asking me that
on this list.