Purpose of the fuse group

[Nikolaus Rath]

In Jaunty, users are no longer added to the fuse group by default.

This causes error messages like this when one attempts to use fuse:

$ python /usr/share/doc/python-fuse/examples/hello.py -s -f -o allow_other ~/tmp
fusermount: failed to open /etc/fuse.conf: Permission denied
fusermount: option allow_other only allowed if 'user_allow_other' is set in /etc/fuse.conf
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/doc/python-fuse/examples/hello.py", line 92, in <module>
    main()
  File "/usr/share/doc/python-fuse/examples/hello.py", line 89, in main
    server.main()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/fuse.py", line 713, in main
    main(**d)
fuse.FuseError: filesystem initialization failed

Note, however that it is still possible to use fuse filesystems. In some cases the error message is shown and the mount proceeds anyway, while in others even the error message is hidden:

$ groups
nikratio adm dialout cdrom plugdev lpadmin admin sambashare
$ ls tmp/
$ python /usr/share/doc/python-fuse/examples/hello.py tmp/
$ ls tmp
hello
$ fusermount -u tmp

I think something is wrong with this. If users do not need to be in the fuse group to use fuse, why is /etc/fuse.conf only readable by members of this group? Or, putting it the other way around, why am I allowed to use fuse if I'm not in the fuse group?

This may or may not be related to bug #339889 (I don't quite understand the last comment and why it was set to invalid).

[10111 (joachim-neu)]

I experienced the same behavior yesterday. Is the read-permission only to members of the fuse-group the only restriction that prohibits users from using fuse? Usually I'd say fuse.conf should be readable to anyone as most other config-files in /etc ...

Why are users not placed into the fuse-group anymore?

[Nikolaus Rath (nikratio)]

Confirming according to previous comment.

[Mihai Capotă (mihaic)]

I can reproduce this bug in Ubuntu 10.10.

[Petar Bogdanovic (petar-smokva)]

Also, while mount.fuse(8) talks about fusermount being sgid fuse, in Ubuntu 14.04 fusermount is actually suid root.

I could just chmod a+r /etc/fuse.conf but that doesn't feel right.