Changing the gid and perms on a device

[Richard Shaw]

On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 4:15 PM, JD <jd1008 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a flash disk which is detected as /dev/sdc
>
> I need to use it as a virtualbox device.
> So I created a vmdk for the disk and registered it.
> Furthermore, virtualbox requires that in order to use
> the device, the device must belong to the group
> vboxusers.
> So I chmod'ed it to vboxusers.

I'm recalling this from memory so I hope it's accurate, but...

Why don't you use it as a USB device instead?

Also, I'm not completely sure that the disk has to be owned by
vboxusers. If you run virtualbox as yourself, and you're in the disks
group, I think that is sufficient.


> But somehow magically, it reverts back to being
> owned by the group disks.

Do you mean when you unplug and re-plug the flash drive? This is due
to udev so nothing really to do with selinux.


> I have disabled selinux. So I have no idea what/who
> is changing it back. This is the reason why I am asking
> this list. The virtualbox list does not seem to have
> an answer.

Easy way: access it as a usb device
Harder way: add yourself to disk(s?) group and use it as a raw disk vmdk.
Hardest way: modify the udev rules to make vboxusers the owner.

Richard