I noticed something interesting which I am not sure whether it is the way things should be.
I have installed Redhat 6.0 for Intel with KDE (this works for Gnome too).
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[root@localhost mithun]# uname -a
Linux localhost.localdomain 2.2.5-15 #1 Mon Apr 19 21:39:28 EDT 1999 i686 unknown
[root@localhost mithun]# rpm -q kdebase
kdebase-1.1.1pre2-2
--------------------------------
Next I created a non-priviledged user "mithun" using useradd and logged in using that userid.
After this I do a su to change to root and fire up X-windows. Now I open a Kconsole and do
ls -l /dev | grep mithun
and this is what I get (I get somthing simillar in case of Gnome too - I haven't checked AnotherLevel for this)
----------------------------
crw------- 1 mithun sys 14, 4 Apr 18 01:23 audio
crw------- 1 mithun sys 14, 20 Apr 18 01:23 audio1
crw------- 1 mithun sys 14, 3 Apr 18 01:23 dsp
crw------- 1 mithun sys 14, 19 Apr 18 01:23 dsp1
crw------- 1 mithun root 29, 0 Apr 12 21:12 fb0
crw------- 1 mithun root 29, 32 Apr 12 21:12 fb1
crw------- 1 mithun root 29, 64 Apr 12 21:17 fb2
crw------- 1 mithun root 29, 96 Apr 12 21:17 fb3
crw------- 1 mithun root 29, 128 Apr 12 21:17 fb4
crw------- 1 mithun root 29, 160 Apr 12 21:17 fb5
crw------- 1 mithun root 29, 192 Apr 12 21:17 fb6
crw------- 1 mithun root 29, 224 Apr 12 21:18 fb7
brw------- 1 mithun floppy 2, 0 May 6 1998 fd0
brw------- 1 mithun floppy 2, 12 May 6 1998 fd0D360
brw------- 1 mithun floppy 2, 16 May 6 1998 fd0D720
brw------- 1 mithun floppy 2, 28 May 6 1998 fd0H1440
brw------- 1 mithun floppy 2, 12 May 6 1998 fd0H360
brw------- 1 mithun floppy 2, 16 May 6 1998 fd0H720
brw------- 1 mithun floppy 2, 4 May 6 1998 fd0d360
brw------- 1 mithun floppy 2, 8 May 6 1998 fd0h1200
brw------- 1 mithun floppy 2, 20 May 6 1998 fd0h360
brw------- 1 mithun floppy 2, 24 May 6 1998 fd0h720
brw------- 1 mithun floppy 2, 1 May 6 1998 fd1
brw------- 1 mithun floppy 2, 13 May 6 1998 fd1D360
brw------- 1 mithun floppy 2, 17 May 6 1998 fd1D720
brw------- 1 mithun floppy 2, 29 May 6 1998 fd1H1440
brw------- 1 mithun floppy 2, 13 May 6 1998 fd1H360
brw------- 1 mithun floppy 2, 17 May 6 1998 fd1H720
brw------- 1 mithun floppy 2, 5 May 6 1998 fd1d360
brw------- 1 mithun floppy 2, 9 May 6 1998 fd1h1200
brw------- 1 mithun floppy 2, 21 May 6 1998 fd1h360
brw------- 1 mithun floppy 2, 25 May 6 1998 fd1h720
brw------- 1 mithun disk 22, 0 May 6 1998 hdc
crw------- 1 mithun root 15, 0 Apr 16 11:37 js0
crw------- 1 mithun root 15, 1 Apr 16 11:37 js1
crw------- 1 mithun root 15, 2 Apr 16 11:37 js2
crw------- 1 mithun root 15, 3 Apr 16 11:37 js3
crw------- 1 mithun sys 35, 0 Apr 18 01:23 midi0
crw------- 1 mithun sys 14, 2 Apr 18 01:23 midi00
crw------- 1 mithun sys 14, 18 Apr 18 01:23 midi01
crw------- 1 mithun sys 14, 34 Apr 18 01:23 midi02
crw------- 1 mithun sys 14, 50 Apr 18 01:23 midi03
crw------- 1 mithun sys 35, 1 Apr 18 01:23 midi1
crw------- 1 mithun sys 35, 2 Apr 18 01:23 midi2
crw------- 1 mithun sys 35, 3 Apr 18 01:23 midi3
crw------- 1 mithun sys 14, 0 Apr 18 01:23 mixer
crw------- 1 mithun sys 14, 16 Apr 18 01:23 mixer1
crw------- 1 mithun sys 14, 1 Apr 18 01:23 sequencer
crw--w---- 1 mithun tty 4, 1 Oct 5 18:01 tty1
crw--w---- 1 mithun tty 7, 1 May 6 1998 vcs1
crw--w---- 1 mithun tty 7, 129 May 6 1998 vcsa1
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I come out of X-Windows and logout completely. After this I login as root and start X-Windows and now everything under /dev is owned by root. What I can't understand is that why would devices like /dev/hdc (my cd drive !!!) , /dev/fd0 (my floppy drive) suddenly become owned by a non-priviledged user just because I ran X-Windows.
Since remote root login is not allowed every superuser would be having a non-priviledged account on the system just in case he cant physically access the machine - so my scenario isn't exactly out of this world.
Ofcourse from my point of view nothing in the /dev directory should be owned by a non-priviledged user (other than maybe the /dev/vcs* files and maybe /dev/tty??). Maybe I am wrong but I would really like to know what exactly is happening here.
Regards
Mithun
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