linux-kernel - Re: Relax permissions for reading hard drive serial number?

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Date:	Sun, 2 Dec 2007 14:15:35 +0000
From:	Pavel Machek <pavel@....cz>
To:	Dan Kegel <dank@...el.com>
Cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Relax permissions for reading hard drive serial number?

Hi!

> http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=96836765403118&w=2, Linus wrote:
> > Hmm.. I have this feeling that it would be much nicer to
> > just implement the NT system calls directly.
> > ...
> > I wouldn't be adverse to supporting Wine better...
> 
> A few years on, Wine has matured to the point where it's
> ready to run quite a few apps, even some protected by Safedisc.
> One sticking point is that apps like Photoshop and probably
> Punkbuster want to retrieve the hard drive's serial number,
> but Linux restricts access to that info:
> $ ls -l /proc/ide/hda/identify
> -r-------- 1 root root 0 2007-11-29 07:05 /proc/ide/hda/identify
> (And even if /proc/ide goes away, the other ways of retrieving
> this info are similarly restricted to root.)
> 
> Any reason the access control on this info shouldn't be eased a bit,
> e.g. make /proc/ide/*/identify be mode 444?

I think conslusion was 'unchangeable machine ids are root-only'. But
perhaps you can chmod in startup scripts?

> An alternative might be for Wine to simply fake the serial number,
> but I would like to avoid that if possible.

Fake it, I'd say.
-- 
(english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html
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