Re: [gpsd-dev] geoclue/gnome-bluetooth integration

[Eric S. Raymond]

Alban Browaeys <address@hidden>:
> I seem to have lost all hope to be able to be able to let the user be
> able to register a new device to gpsd . Ie it seems the only way is to
> talk to the gpsd.sock which is by the manpage told to be root only.
> Does this means gpsd is designed to force admins to provide root access
> to its users owning a bluetooth device ?

No.  The problem is security.  The GPSD control socket can be used to
do things that are unsafe; making it world-writeable would allow 
denial-of-service attacks.

Up to now, root-only access has been acceptable because there were 
only two major use cases.  Usually, devices are USB and set up by
hotplug.  Serial devices have to be set up by hand, so the assumption
is that gpsc is run by hand with a command-line device, bypassing
the control socket.

I recognize from what you say that Bluetooth presents a design problem that 
will require us to change our model somewhat. Does the bluetooth program
that wants to use this socket run in some sort of admin or tty group?  If
so, the solution might be as simple as changing the socket ownership.
-- 
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>