New users can't access sound and webcam

The solution in the how to section hasn't solved my problem

viewtopic.php?f=39&t=6455&hilit=add+user+wheel&start=10

I have recently bought an AA1 linpus 160GBand created new users and disabled auto login as described. Unfortunately adding the users to the wheel and root groups hasn't done the trick for me. Still can't access sound /volume control and webcam.

When starting a program with sound output I get the following error message

device /dev/dsp can't be opened (permission denied)

on double clicking volume icon

No volume control GStreamer plugins and /or devices found

Has anyone over come this problem? I'm fairly new to linux so straight forward replies would be appreciated!

 

Is your new user in the group audio ?

 

Thanks for replying Jasper. I didn't add to the group audio. I just followed the instructions on the solution to adding new users. How would I add a user to the group audio?

Would the webcam be covered by this group too?

Thanks,

N

 

This problem now solved. I hadn't added to root. Incidentally there does not seem to be a group audio.

I'm sure more experienced users would have spotted staight away that there is an error here - the comand to add the user to root is

"usermod --append -G root username"

Being a newbie I thought it simplest to cut and paste so didn't notice!

Hope this helps anyone else in a similar position.

N

 

Don't think it is a good idea to make the user a member of group 'root'. To me that seems to break the most fundamental idea of security in Unix/Linux.

To see what groups a user is in, the command is:

groups

On my ( Debian ) system the output of

ls -l /dev/dsp

is

crw-rw---- 1 root audio 14, 3 2009-03-27 14:32 /dev/dsp

As you can see: owner is root, group is audio.

--Japser.