Bug 2349572 - As an Admin I cannot assign the dialout group to myself using sudo usermod -a -G dialout username
Summary: As an Admin I cannot assign the dialout group to myself using sudo usermod -a...
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: setup
Version: 42
Hardware: x86_64
OS: Linux
unspecified
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Martin Osvald 🛹
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2025-03-03 17:02 UTC by Pat Kelly
Modified: 2025-03-04 19:46 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2025-03-04 13:19:52 UTC
Type: ---
Embargoed:


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Description Pat Kelly 2025-03-03 17:02:50 UTC
using "sudo usermod -a -G dailout username" followed by "reboot" The dialout group is not assigned to the username as determined by "groups" only shows wheel. If I logout then login as another user the "sudo usermod -a -G dailout username" followed by logout and login as the original username then "groups" shows wheel and dialout.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.As given in Details
2.
3.
Actual Results:  
dialout is not added to my normal admin account

Expected Results:  
dialout is added to my normal admin account

As above

Comment 1 Pat Kelly 2025-03-03 17:20:27 UTC
Either serial ports or USB interfaces that emulate serial ports are commonly used to interface with electronics that control machines (what I do) or interface with hardware test systems. The devices I design are all controlled by a desktop or laptop with Fedora Workstation with my code running on it. If I can use serial ports anymore none of the machines will be able to be upgraded until I can design and test another interface. I'd really prefer not to have to do that. Sorry for the personal rant.

Comment 2 Pat Kelly 2025-03-03 17:22:25 UTC
(In reply to Pat Kelly from comment #1)
> Either serial ports or USB interfaces that emulate serial ports are commonly
> used to interface with electronics that control machines (what I do) or
> interface with hardware test systems. The devices I design are all
> controlled by a desktop or laptop with Fedora Workstation with my code
> running on it. If I can use serial ports anymore none of the machines will
> be able to be upgraded until I can't design and test another interface. I'd
> really prefer not to have to do that. Sorry for the personal rant.

Comment 3 Adam Williamson 2025-03-04 01:28:54 UTC
So I've fiddled around with this a bit today. On a fresh install of a recent F42 Workstation live, doing `sudo usermod -a -G dailout username` doesn't seem to take effect immediately even with a log out / log in cycle (nor does `newgrp -` help), but on a reboot it kicks in, I see dialout in the user's groups.

I did notice that on my own system, which runs Silverblue, dialout is not in /etc/group at all. On the clean install of Workstation, it is. Are you running atomic or non-atomic Fedora?

Comment 4 Pat Kelly 2025-03-04 13:19:52 UTC
First, I apologize. Today I discovered that somewhere along the line I must have done something wrong. I tried it several times and it always seemed like their was an issue with either dialout or "usermod -a -G dialout username".

Today I reinstalled Fedora release 42 (Adams) from the RPM I got from kojipkgs branched latest version on my bare metal test machine. I did it the same way I did it before and the install went fine. Now the usermod works fine. The only variable I can think of is that before I tried the usermod last time I had configured may test machine for my as deployed testing so lots of things got changed.

Now I will remove dialout. then run the script I use to configure the system for as deployed and try the usermod again.

Comment 5 Adam Williamson 2025-03-04 16:42:50 UTC
I can actually reproduce this...but only on Silverblue (probably all Atomic). On a test Silverblue install I just ran:

* dialout does not appear in /etc/group (or anything else in /etc)
* after `sudo usermod -a -G dialout test` (as an admin user called 'test') and reboot, running `groups` as test does not show dialout
* ls does show /dev/ttyS* as owned by user root and a group called 'dialout', with 660 perms
* test cannot read from such a device (as it should be able to if it was in dialout)

So that definitely seems broken. I think this is an Atomic issue, I'll file a ticket for it.

Comment 6 Adam Williamson 2025-03-04 16:58:27 UTC
ah, hmm, it seems on ostree, most group entries get moved to /usr/lib/group , and indeed dialout is there:

test@fedora:~$ grep dialout /usr/lib/group 
dialout:x:18:

but adding test to dialout definitely isn't working.

Comment 7 Adam Williamson 2025-03-04 17:32:07 UTC
https://gitlab.com/fedora/ostree/sig/-/issues/68

Comment 8 Adam Williamson 2025-03-04 19:46:05 UTC
Looks like this is a known issue on Atomic - https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-silverblue/troubleshooting/#_unable_to_add_user_to_group


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