From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from uq.net.au(fox.uq.net.au[203.101.255.1]) (1934 bytes) by braille.uwo.ca via smail with P:esmtp/D:aliases/T:pipe (sender: ) id for ; Thu, 15 Feb 2001 08:01:07 -0500 (EST) (Smail-3.2.0.102 1998-Aug-2 #2 built 1999-Sep-5) Received: from data.home (mail@dyn-21-183.dialin.uq.net.au [203.100.21.183]) by uq.net.au (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id XAA10497 for ; Thu, 15 Feb 2001 23:01:05 +1000 (GMT+1000) Received: from geoff by data.home with local-esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 14TO1t-0003ce-00; Thu, 15 Feb 2001 23:01:01 +1000 Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 23:01:01 +1000 (EST) From: Geoff Shang To: Subject: Re: /proc/speakup In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII List-Id: On Thu, 15 Feb 2001, Steve Holmes wrote: > I thought I heard a while back that only root could update these files. > Is that so? That is not so. The files in /proc/speakup apart from the exceptions discussed earlier today can be updated by any user on the system. There are some files in /proc/speakup/ (where is the currently used synth) which contain data that, if modified, might cause serious damage to the system. These files therefore can only be modified by root. Since the proc file system is only a vertual file system, commands like chmod and chown do not actually work, even though they return without errors. The permissions have to be set as part of the speakup code. Jim and I discussed alternative access methods for these files, but the choices seem to be access for all or access for no-one except root, without making it a configurable option in either the kernel command line or perhaps the kernel config. Personally, I'd be quite happy to see all this be root access only, but I can understand why people might want to be able to change synth settings in user-space. Geoff.