Re: Creating RAM disks as a non root user.

In message [off-list ref] you wrote:

Here is the recipe we use to mount ramdisk images without being a root user.

...

Note that the option 'user' in fstab allows any user to mount/unmount this specific entry.

Just _mounting_ ramdisk images is not the problem...

You can either create new ramdisk images, or mount already existing ones (very useful!).

...but to create a useful ramdisk image you will usually also have to
create the device nodes in the /dev directory. And this is  something
that  really  _requires_ root permissions (or it would otherwise open
huge security issues).


And from the system administrator's point of view allowing anybody to
mount any images he likes is a serious security issue, too.

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

--
Software Engineering:  Embedded and Realtime Systems,  Embedded Linux
Phone: (+49)-8142-4596-87  Fax: (+49)-8142-4596-88  Email: wd@denx.de
"If the code and  the  comments  disagree,  then  both  are  probably
wrong."                                                - Norm Schryer

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On Tue, 2003-02-04 at 22:52, Wolfgang Denk wrote:

In message [off-list ref] you wrote:

quoted

Here is the recipe we use to mount ramdisk images without being a root user.

...

quoted

Note that the option 'user' in fstab allows any user to mount/unmount this specific entry.

Just _mounting_ ramdisk images is not the problem...

quoted

You can either create new ramdisk images, or mount already existing ones (very useful!).

...but to create a useful ramdisk image you will usually also have to
create the device nodes in the /dev directory. And this is  something
that  really  _requires_ root permissions (or it would otherwise open
huge security issues).

If you want full control over owner and group on a file by file basis
you can run fakeroot while creating the image/tar or whatever.

I don't know if fakeroot exist anywhere else than in debian but it
should not be hard to port.

--
Kenneth Johansson
Ericsson AB                       Tel: +46 8 404 71 83
Tellusborgsvägen  94              Fax: +46 8 404 72 72
126 25 Stockholm                  ken@switchboard.ericsson.se


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