[ale] user using mount

[JK]

Keith Hopkins wrote:

>David Corbin wrote:
>  
>
>>On Sunday 28 May 2006 06:37 am, Keith Hopkins wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>David Corbin wrote:
>>>      
>>>
>>>>Is there a way to mount an NFS export as "dump user", without having to
>>>>configure it in fstab?  mount seems to object to this...
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>`mount` usually requires 'root' unless it is configured properly in
>>>/etc/fstab, or under an automounter, or under by running mount via `sudo`.
>>>      
>>>
>>Is there a security justification for this limitation?
>>
>>    
>>
>
>Yes.
>
>Most of this goes back to access permissions to the devices under /dev that you want to mount.
>
>ll /dev/hda
>brw-r----- 1 root disk 3, 1 2006-05-27 18:25 /dev/hda1
>
>Guess who rw has access?  Not just any 'dumb user', just 'root'. Ci Zhi.
>  
>
All device nodes should, of course,  be protected at all times (to
prevent clueless access to the raw devices), but that shouldn't
(and doesn't) stop us administratively giving permissions to users to
mount particular devices.  If you look at the permissions for your
CD-ROM's device node, it will be root-only, but you can still
mount it. The "user" option in /etc/fstab governs the behavior
of the "mount" command in this regard.

-- JK