Enabling Sound on my NIS Controlled Ubuntu Machine

November 25, 2007 by Isaac

My desktop computer at work is basically held hostage by the powers-that-be. It is part of a NIS managed network, where all the user accounts and login info is on the network. I am running Ubuntu Linux 7.10 which defaults to having the audio device belong to the audio group. That's fine for normal operation, but since my user account is controlled elsewhere I could not add myself to the audio group. However, I do have local root access at my disposal. <evil laugh>

Now, if I go and do a chown on the audio devices it will only last as long as I don't reboot the computer. So, I wanted a more permanent solution. I know the inherent risks associated with it, but I basically enabled audio for all network users. In my /etc/rc.local file I added the following:

# Enable sound for nis users
chown root.users /dev/adsp /dev/audio /dev/dsp
chown root.users /dev/mixer /dev/rtc /dev/sequencer /dev/sequencer2

This works. I know it's not ideal, but I can listen to my music at work now.

Posted in Linux