Introduction to Linux Audio
Linked by Filippo Pappalardo on Wed 14th Apr 2004 07:36 UTC
Multimedia, AV I wanted to write something about the great progress being carried on linux as OS of choice for a professional Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) since a long time. With the inclusion of the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) into the 2.6 kernels, time has come to extend my experiences to all of you.
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@Peder
by Chris Metzler on Thu 15th Apr 2004 14:08 UTC


> all the apps that will interface with it, like Ardour
> or Hydrogen or Rosegarden, have to run as root...and it
> is a security risk

In what sense? You shouldn't be hooked up to internet while recording anyway, and I doubt you'll be running your multi-user production server as an Ardour server. So the only "risk" is something crashing and wiping your hard drive, which is very unlikely.


You may want to re-read what I wrote; from what you say here, as well as the way you excerpted it above, it appears that you mis-parsed what I said.

I didn't say that running those apps as root is a security risk. I said that running those apps as root is scary, because it's always scary to run complicated apps as root, for reasons such as the one you cite. Bugs are bad; bugs occurring with root privileges can be very bad. My reference to a security risk wasn't with regard to running these apps as root, though. Instead, what I said was that the alternative to running those apps as root -- patching the kernel to enable POSIX capabilities inheritance -- is a security risk. You may decide the risk is minor for you, and that's fine; plenty of other Linux pro-audio folks do likewise.