Hello,
I think I still didn't make myself clear. Yes there is (I guess) a bad bug in Wine. But: giving normal users a right to write to /dev/hd? is very dangerous and should be avoided.
Exactly, I second this. For example, in my standard Linux setup, the disks have the following permissions: brw------- 1 root root 3, 0 Nov 13 19:58 /dev/hda brw------- 1 root root 3, 1 Nov 13 19:58 /dev/hda1 brw------- 1 root root 3, 2 Nov 13 19:58 /dev/hda2 brw------- 1 root root 3, 3 Nov 13 19:58 /dev/hda3 brw------- 1 root root 3, 4 Nov 13 19:58 /dev/hda4 brw------- 1 root root 3, 5 Nov 13 19:58 /dev/hda5 brw------- 1 root root 3, 6 Nov 13 19:58 /dev/hda6 brw------- 1 root root 3, 7 Nov 13 19:58 /dev/hda7
Why would a normal user need a write access to /dev/hd? ?
I can imagine just a single exception - when it is a windows partition, used directly by some windows "emulation" software (as vmware can). But AFAIK wine cannot do this, so it's not needed there.
Wine can have bugs, any other application could have bugs that made them try to write things to /dev/hd?. You could get some virus or whatever that execute with you user's right and you really don't want it to wipe out your hdd, do you ?
Even the user can have a bug :-). I'm running and administering UN*X systems from 1989 but I still strictly distinguish between root and user rights. I've found it very VERY useful. However, I'm also voting for finding and solving this wine bug. With regards, Pavel Troller