Comment 6 for bug 318746

For reference, this is Debian bug <http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=510639>; I put some notes and proposed patches there while trying to fix it in the (older?) version used in Debian 5.0.

A perhaps-simpler way to fix NetworkManager's use of hal would be to allow root to access all of hal's functionality, which I've proposed as a patch to the Debian package. Since root is allowed to replace or impersonate hal, being able to access hal seems fairly uncontroversial.

hal also has the bug tracked by <http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18961> (send_interface without send_destination) which I've proposed as a patch; it won't apply upstream without minor modification since I applied it after the Debian-specific group-based access control patch, but the changes are hopefully obvious.

According to some quick testing, gnome-power-manager (at least at the version in Debian 5.0) also wants to access the CPUFreq interface, so that should probably be allowed for users who are at_console (or some other suitable access control - in Debian it's the powerdev group, but that's Debian-specific anyway). I also suggested allowing DockStation and WakeOnLan, which seemed in-scope for the Debian powerdev group.

Which other interfaces have I missed, that are "fairly safe" for users with physical access?