[TriLUG] USB Palm under linux

[Joshua Bedick]

Thanks for everyone's input on this.

I'll try the pam_console item first, but may fall back on the group idea if I
get stuck.  The computer in question is a laptop and it stays in the office.  At
some  time in the future it may travel with me.

On a related note, the reason I'm setting this up is I dropped my original Palm
IIIe one too many times.  The screen was trashed so I got myself a new Zire 71
(from ebay).  That however leaves me with a Serial hotsync cradle for the Palm
III and some screen protectors that fit the following devices (PalmPilot, Palm
III (incl IIIc), Palm VII, IBM WorkPad, and Handspring Visor).  If anyone would
like to give these a new home please let me know.

Joshua

Quoting Jeremy Portzer <jeremyp at pobox.com>:

> On Thu, 2003-07-24 at 09:04, rasch at raschnet.com wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 08:17:21PM -0400, Joshua Bedick wrote:
> > > Quick Question about setting up a palm device under linux.  First off
> > > after a lot of time and RTFM I've got it working.  My question is more
> > > procedural.  Pilot-Link and GPilot work fine under RH 9 as root.  To
> get
> > > it to work as a user I changed the permissions on a file:
> > > 
> > > chmod 666 /dev/ttyUSB1
> > > 
> > > Is this a bad idea?  If it is what do I do instead?
> > 
> > This isn't _that_ bad of an idea depending on who has access to your
> > system.  Also, considering that your pda only talks over this port while
> > it's actively hotsyncing the opportunity for anyone else to write/read
> > from this port is narrow.  However, to improve this security you can
> > create a group in your /etc/group file called "pda" with you as a member
> > and "chgrp pda /dev/ttyUSB1".  Then, you can use "chmod 660
> > /dev/ttyUSB1" and only people in the pda group can access that port.
> > Note: if you add yourself to the pda group you'll have to log out/in for
> > it to take effect; you can find out what groups you belong to by typing
> > "groups".
> 
> This will work, but it's a PITA to maintain.
> The much "cleaner" approach is pam_console and console.perms(5) as Brian
> Weaver explained.
> 
> --Jeremy
> 
> -- 
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