[CLUG] Microsoft's failings/network monitoring

[Collins_Paul at emc.com]

> KDE also has a garbage setup for the CD-ROM and floppy disk 
> icons which
> it puts on the desktop, as these are inaccessible except from root
> (the device permissions are set correctly). This would be normal if
> this was a classical multi-user Unix host, where you don't want users
> to access such devices, but it's not, it's a single-user laptop. The
> designers of KDE clearly haven't grasped yet that Linux gets used
> as a single-user workstation infinitely more than it gets used as a
> multi-user host, and allowed for a setuid root CD and floppy 
> setup. What
> are these people smoking?


For user-mounting you need to add lines to /etc/fstab with special options
(user,noauto and a bunch of others) for each device you want users to be
able to access.  Most distros should have these entries.  I use Mandrake 6.1
with GNOME, and the CDROM icons worked with no hassle.

Only root can mount devices.  The permissions on devices should always be
660; "other" should never have access.

# Default Mandrake 6.1 /etc/fstab entries:
/dev/fd0	/mnt/floppy             auto
sync,user,noauto,nosuid,nodev,unhide 0 0
/dev/cdrom	/mnt/cdrom              auto
user,noauto,nosuid,exec,nodev,ro 0 0

I don't like KDE, but this is not in general a KDE-specific issue.

Paul.