Mailing List Archive: What groups should user "root" be in?

What groups should user "root" be in?

May 19, 2021, 1:25 AM

Post #1 of 5 (346 views)

Greetings,

still hunting down the reasons for my laptop not producing any sound, I
have meanwhile found reports on the web "no sound even though root is in
group audio" or "Dbus doesn't "care" who root is -- it checks the ident-
ity of the account that requested an action, and if that account isn't
allowed to perform that action, the request is denied" [1].

I can't remember ever having manually added user "root" to any groups
since I installed Gentoo on my laptop (as opposed to adding my own user-
id to quite some groups)m and these are the few groups "root" is into:

$ id root
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root),1(bin),2(daemon),3(sys),4(adm),6(disk),10(wheel),11(floppy),26(tape),27(video)
$

Should there be more? In particular, should "root" be in group "audio"?

Sincerely,
Rainer

[1] https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?p=3640443#post3640443

Re: What groups should user "root" be in? [ In reply to ]

rdalek1967 at gmail

May 19, 2021, 1:38 AM

Post #2 of 5 (346 views)

Permalink

Dr Rainer Woitok wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> still hunting down the reasons for my laptop not producing any sound, I
> have meanwhile found reports on the web "no sound even though root is in
> group audio" or "Dbus doesn't "care" who root is -- it checks the ident-
> ity of the account that requested an action, and if that account isn't
> allowed to perform that action, the request is denied" [1].
>
> I can't remember ever having manually added user "root" to any groups
> since I installed Gentoo on my laptop (as opposed to adding my own user-
> id to quite some groups)m and these are the few groups "root" is into:
>
> $ id root
> uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root),1(bin),2(daemon),3(sys),4(adm),6(disk),10(wheel),11(floppy),26(tape),27(video)
> $
>
> Should there be more? In particular, should "root" be in group "audio"?
>
> Sincerely,
> Rainer
>
> [1] https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?p=3640443#post3640443
>
>

If it helps, this is what I have:

root@fireball / # cat /etc/group | grep root
root::0:root
bin::1:root,bin,daemon
daemon::2:root,bin,daemon
sys::3:root,bin,adm
adm::4:root,adm,daemon
disk::6:root,adm
wheel::10:root,dale2,dale
floppy::11:root,dale
dialout::20:root,dale,dale2
tape::26:root
video::27:root,dale,dale2,sddm
root@fireball / #

Looking at the whole file, not everything mentions root, most don't
actually.

Dale

:-) :-)

Re: What groups should user "root" be in? [ In reply to ]

gentoo.user at aisha

May 19, 2021, 4:14 PM

Post #3 of 5 (346 views)

Permalink

On 21/05/19 10:25AM, Dr Rainer Woitok wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> still hunting down the reasons for my laptop not producing any sound, I
> have meanwhile found reports on the web "no sound even though root is in
> group audio" or "Dbus doesn't "care" who root is -- it checks the ident-
> ity of the account that requested an action, and if that account isn't
> allowed to perform that action, the request is denied" [1].
>
> I can't remember ever having manually added user "root" to any groups
> since I installed Gentoo on my laptop (as opposed to adding my own user-
> id to quite some groups)m and these are the few groups "root" is into:
>
> $ id root
> uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root),1(bin),2(daemon),3(sys),4(adm),6(disk),10(wheel),11(floppy),26(tape),27(video)
> $
>
> Should there be more? In particular, should "root" be in group "audio"?
>

Are you running your machine day-to-day as root?
That sounds like a recipe for disaster...

That preaching aside, I do have audio working as a normal user and my groups are -

$ groups aisha
wheel video portage lxc lxd aisha
$ groups root
root bin daemon sys adm disk wheel floppy tape video lxc lxd

Fwiw, I only added lxc/lxd to root manually (I think, it's an old machine).
Hope this helps, ymmv.

Cheers

> Sincerely,
> Rainer
>
> [1] https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?p=3640443#post3640443
>

Re: What groups should user "root" be in? [ In reply to ]

rainer.woitok at gmail

May 20, 2021, 2:42 AM

Post #4 of 5 (346 views)

Permalink

Aisha,

On Wednesday, 2021-05-19 19:14:27 -0400, you wrote:

> ...
> Are you running your machine day-to-day as root?
> That sounds like a recipe for disaster...

Of course not. But if that quote [1] had any substance in it, it COULD
happen that some deamon running as user "root" failed because of "root"
not being in the correct groups.

> That preaching aside, I do have audio working as a normal user and my groups are -
>
> $ groups aisha
> wheel video portage lxc lxd aisha
> $ groups root
> root bin daemon sys adm disk wheel floppy tape video lxc lxd

So neither your own id nor "root" is a member of group "audio" and audio
is working nevertheless. Hum, that just triggers the next question to
all Gentooers: What the heck is group "audio" good for?

> ...
> > [1] https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?p=3640443#post3640443

Sincerely,
Rainer

Re: What groups should user "root" be in? [ In reply to ]

lists_gentoo at linuxkompis

May 20, 2021, 3:34 AM

Post #5 of 5 (346 views)

Permalink

On May 20, 2021 11:42:23 AM GMT+02:00, Dr Rainer Woitok <rainer.woitok@gmail.com> wrote:
>Aisha,
>
>On Wednesday, 2021-05-19 19:14:27 -0400, you wrote:
>
>> ...
>> Are you running your machine day-to-day as root?
>> That sounds like a recipe for disaster...
>
>Of course not. But if that quote [1] had any substance in it, it COULD
>happen that some deamon running as user "root" failed because of "root"
>not being in the correct groups.
>
>> That preaching aside, I do have audio working as a normal user and my groups are -
>>
>> $ groups aisha
>> wheel video portage lxc lxd aisha
>> $ groups root
>> root bin daemon sys adm disk wheel floppy tape video lxc lxd
>
>So neither your own id nor "root" is a member of group "audio" and audio
>is working nevertheless. Hum, that just triggers the next question to
>all Gentooers: What the heck is group "audio" good for?
>
>> ...
>> > [1] https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?p=3640443#post3640443
>
>Sincerely,
> Rainer
>

Here's a good explanation:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Audio/TheAudioGroup

--
Hund