Bug#656910: Group "audio" is used for two incompatible things

David Henningsson david.henningsson at canonical.com
Sun Jan 22 20:02:00 UTC 2012


Package: jackd2
Severity: normal
Version: 1.9.8~dfsg.1-1

The "audio" group has a special meaning in standard desktop usage - as 
defined in udev rules, it gives access to sound devices to users in that 
group, thereby overriding/complementing Consolekit's automatic 
permission assignment (which allows the current logged in user to have 
sound card access).

As a result, it is normally not recommended to let a user be a part of 
the audio group.

However, jackd2 uses the same group name for a different purpose: it 
enables (if user activates it on installation) the users in the audio 
group to run processes with rt priority and unlimited memory locking.

This is problematic; as a reasonably common use case would be to 
actually make use of RT priority, but at the same time use ConsoleKit's 
built-in device assignment.

My suggestion is to rename "audio" to something else in jackd2.

-- 
David Henningsson, Canonical Ltd.
http://launchpad.net/~diwic





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