Looks like you’re on Fedora Silverblue (or other Atomic version). This is happening because the system groups are in /usr/lib/group rather than /etc/group and this causes the issue you’re seeing here. You can work around it by getting into a root shell with something like
sudo -iand then getting the group added to /etc/group with
grep -E '^dialout' /usr/lib/group >> /etc/groupafter that, you’ll be able to add your user to the group with
usermod -aG dialout pipeRight on the money, that’s what I ended up doing. Thanks!
Is that considered a feature for some reason? That seems objectively terrible.
No, it’s a side effect of how everything’s handled by rpm-ostree currently, and it’s on the list of issues to be fixed.
Why can’t we keep system config things in /etc? It’s a method that works in unsurprising ways.
Is etc the mutable part? Would you have to do this again to add more users after a reboot?
/etc is writable, so no reboots are required. That said, /etc is treated in a special way and each deployment will have its own /etc, based on the previous one.
So if you make changes to /etc then revert to a previous deployment, your changes will be reverted as well. But if you make changes and upgrade (or do whatever to create a new deployment), your changes will bu preserved.
That’s really helpful to understand the caveats, thank you.
It’s like when I run into some issue with how I’ve set up my system in NixOS and have to explain to a non-Linux user that it isn’t Linux that’s the issue but how I’m using an especially weird Linux lol
Enter Password: ********
The password you entered is incorrect. Would you like to reset your password?
Y
Please enter your new password: ********
New password cannot be the same as old password.
😑
Yeah this one is ridiculous. There are some systems that have bounced my password … literally the one stored in a password manager … and gaslite me that I “must have forgotten my password.”
If you want to add an existing user to an existing group, use:
usermod -a -GI like
gpasswd -a
I’ve had this one recently.
It gives you an error message, but creates the group anyway.
(some!) FOSS developers when you open an issue about it: works for me. Closed
(Disclaimer: I know not all foss devs are like this. Especially kde devs are awesome.)
Well, I didn’t report it (I’m not sure even how to categorize it), so I really don’t know how it would go.
TBH, I don’t even know what project hosts useradd. Never looked that up.
Even if “isn’t that bad” were true, it’s hardly a stunning endorsement. I wish Linux aimed higher than “not that bad”, but it always seems to hit “only some bits are broken”.
😃
