[Mageia-discuss] Making the serial port available to all

[Frank Griffin]

On 09/17/2012 07:48 AM, Renaud (Ron) Olgiati wrote:
> I think I finally found a simpler solution:

You should enter a bug report for this, as there is probably more going 
on here than simple Unix permissions.

When dinosaurs roamed the earth, Unix systems were multi-user, and it 
was expected that the sysadmin would use the groups to parcel out device 
permissions.  As Linux distros have moved more and more towards 
single-user systems, permission mechanisms have changed.

/dev devices are now created dynamically (as already pointed out) 
according to rules supplied by the packages you install.  The theory is 
that you only end up creating /dev nodes for devices you will actually 
use, rather than the cast of thousands that used to be created 
statically for every possible need.

And access to common devices like CD drives and the audio system is (I 
believe) done dynamically now as well, by packages like polkit and 
systemd, which take their configuration from places other than /etc/group.

As a USB tty is not a common device, it may well have fallen through the 
cracks of these new mechanisms, and should probably be addressed there.