Version: 1.0.4 (using KDE KDE 3.5.8) Installed from: Debian testing/unstable Packages OS: Linux Hi Sebastian, On Debian, users who want to be able to burn CDs or DVDs must be part of the "cdrom" group since this is the group which owns the appropriate devices. I'm sure there are distros that do similar things. Would it be possible to add a check in K3b that would verify that the user has the right to read and write on the device file and suggest a missing group when that's not the case? The strings could me modified by each distro of course, but the basic check would be there. Francois (also filed as http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=401057)
I have no idea how K3b should be able to detect which group is the "CD" group. So I don't think this is feasible.
How about looking up the group of the CD/DVD device and then checking that the user is part of that group? $ ls -l /dev/hdb | cut -d' ' -f4 cdrom $ groups username username : username dialout cdrom floppy audio src video plugdev users powerdev netdev
And how do I know which device is the cd device? For example for me it is /dev/hda, /dev/sr0, /dev/sr1, and /dev/sr2 while on the laptop is it /dev/hdb...
Doesn't K3b already detect the burning device? Or does it only get the ATAPI/SCSI address on the bus?
Aha. So you mean only for write permissions? Well, that k3b already does. You get a warning in case you do not have proper permissions for a device (that could be detected).
That's right. What I had in mind was a warning like: "You don't have write permissions on your 'Sony CD Recorder'. Perhaps you need to ask your system administrator to add you to the 'cdrom' group?"
Well, K3b already warns about missing write permissions. I could check the group the device is in and propose to add the user to that group but there will be situations in which that is wrong, too...
True. I don't think there's a single fix for all distros since they deal with these things differently. It may be worth mentioning though since on some distros that's the correct way to do things. Of course, then package maintainers can adapt the default K3b detection to suit their systems.