[gentoo-dev] rfc: handling the "uucp" group

[gentoo-dev] rfc: handling the "uucp" group

[William Hubbs]

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Hi all,

I have noticed that in the latest versions of udev we are  patching the
default upstream rules to  accomodate our "uucp"  group.

I don't think it is a good idea to patch default rules, so, I want to
bring up possible fixes.

First, baselayout has had the "dialout" group since 2015, so the
longterm fix imo is to possibly use that instead of the uucp group. What
would it take to make that happen, or are we stuck with the uucp group
forever?

Also, I think if we are stuck with the uucp group we should write a rule
of our own instead of patching the default rules.

Thoughts?

William


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Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: handling the "uucp" group

[Mike Gilbert]

On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 2:03 PM, William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have noticed that in the latest versions of udev we are  patching the
> default upstream rules to  accomodate our "uucp"  group.
>
> I don't think it is a good idea to patch default rules, so, I want to
> bring up possible fixes.
>
> First, baselayout has had the "dialout" group since 2015, so the
> longterm fix imo is to possibly use that instead of the uucp group. What
> would it take to make that happen, or are we stuck with the uucp group
> forever?

I think a news item targeting current eudev/udev/systemd users
announcing the change would suffice. Basically, the change means that
modem/serial devices will be owned by the "dialout" group instead of
"uucp", so people will need to update their group membership settings
if they rely on that.

> Also, I think if we are stuck with the uucp group we should write a rule
> of our own instead of patching the default rules.

If we keep the uucp group, I would prefer to continue patching the
udev rule. This makes it very simple to notice if/when upstream makes
changes to it.

Whatever you do, please keep the systemd and eudev teams in the loop
-- this affects more than just sys-fs/udev.

Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: handling the "uucp" group

[Ulrich Mueller]

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>>>>> On Thu, 8 Feb 2018, William Hubbs wrote:

> First, baselayout has had the "dialout" group since 2015, so the
> longterm fix imo is to possibly use that instead of the uucp group.
> What would it take to make that happen, or are we stuck with the
> uucp group forever?

There was an old discussion on this in bug 108249 [1]. The decision
back in 2005 was to use the "uucp" group (because apparently that was
what both Debian and Fedora did at the time), but IIRC it was pretty
much arbitrary.

So I don't see a reason why we couldn't use "dialout" instead.

Ulrich


[1] https://bugs.gentoo.org/108249

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Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: handling the "uucp" group

[R0b0t1]

On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 2:32 PM, Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>>>>> On Thu, 8 Feb 2018, William Hubbs wrote:
>
>> First, baselayout has had the "dialout" group since 2015, so the
>> longterm fix imo is to possibly use that instead of the uucp group.
>> What would it take to make that happen, or are we stuck with the
>> uucp group forever?
>
> There was an old discussion on this in bug 108249 [1]. The decision
> back in 2005 was to use the "uucp" group (because apparently that was
> what both Debian and Fedora did at the time), but IIRC it was pretty
> much arbitrary.
>
> So I don't see a reason why we couldn't use "dialout" instead.
>

UUCP doesn't have any intrinsic relationship with modems, though it
probably finds (found) most use over modems. Was "dialout" or "tty"
changed to "uucp" for some reason?

If possible please use dialout, as very few modems are teletypes.

It makes the most sense to me to give a uucp user dialout or tty
permission, instead of adding myself to the uucp group, a name which
references programs most people won't have installed and won't know
about.

Cheers,
     R0b0t1

Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: handling the "uucp" group

[Ulrich Mueller]

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>>>>> On Thu, 8 Feb 2018, R0b0t1  wrote:

> It makes the most sense to me to give a uucp user dialout or tty
> permission, instead of adding myself to the uucp group, a name which
> references programs most people won't have installed and won't know
> about.

The tty group has an entirely different purpose, namely to allow
programs such as write(1) and wall(1) access other users' terminals.
So conflating it with dialout or uucp would be wrong.

Ulrich

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