System Users

System Users
	Chapter 5. Deployment

You should have a dedicated linux user for the Flumotion services, usually called Flumotion. This user should be specified when you setup the startup scripts. Make sure that the user has access to the audio and video devices for sound and video capture, for instance by making the special Flumotion user a member of the appropriate groups.

Standard distribution packages, for instance with Ubuntu Linux or Fedora Linux, create this user with appropriate access to system devices.

Note

	Note
Some distributions, such as Ubuntu Linux and Debian Linux, make administration easier by having special `audio`, `video`, and `plugdev` groups with ownership of hardware devices. Any user which is a member of these groups may access these devices. However, some distributions, such as Fedora Linux and Red Hat Linux, do not have a sound, video or media group policy. For these Linux distributions, you'll need to do some extra configuration. You need to adjust permissions for these devices: `/dev/snd` and `/dev/mixer` for OSS (sound), `/dev/video` for video devices and `/dev/snd/` for ALSA (sound). Because Fedora Linux uses udev these changes will normally only last until you log out or shutdown, because Fedora only the current user has access to these devices by default. To make these modified permissions permanent, you may create your own `media` group and change the security setup for your distribution to use that group. There are several places you need to change for this to work. You could modify `/etc/udev/permissions.d/50-udev.permissions` and put your changes in `/etc/udev/permissions.d/10-flumotion.permissions`, which will then override the `50-udev.permissions`. You should also look in `/etc/security/console.perms` to see what pam_console changes on login/logout.

Some distributions, such as Ubuntu Linux and Debian Linux, make administration easier by having special audio, video, and plugdev groups with ownership of hardware devices. Any user which is a member of these groups may access these devices.

However, some distributions, such as Fedora Linux and Red Hat Linux, do not have a sound, video or media group policy. For these Linux distributions, you'll need to do some extra configuration.

You need to adjust permissions for these devices: /dev/snd* and /dev/mixer* for OSS (sound), /dev/video* for video devices and /dev/snd/* for ALSA (sound). Because Fedora Linux uses udev these changes will normally only last until you log out or shutdown, because Fedora only the current user has access to these devices by default.

To make these modified permissions permanent, you may create your own media group and change the security setup for your distribution to use that group. There are several places you need to change for this to work.

You could modify /etc/udev/permissions.d/50-udev.permissions and put your changes in /etc/udev/permissions.d/10-flumotion.permissions, which will then override the 50-udev.permissions.

You should also look in /etc/security/console.perms to see what pam_console changes on login/logout.


Configuration Files		Multiple Servers