System administration: getting started.
A few ways of setting permissions for using minicom
(minicom-2.00.0-alt2 package is concerned)

1. Adding/removing a user to/from group uucp; whereby root edits the 
system-wide configuration(s) for minicom. This way was supposed to be 
main one by the packagers of the distribution.

This method is based on the fact that in order to be able to use 
minicom a user shoud have write permissions on /dev/ttyS? and 
/var/lock/serial/, and uucp is a group that has the required permissions (if 
you haven't changed something).


The problem can tackled from another side: by changing permissions on 
/dev/ttyS? and /var/lock/serial/, you control the set of users who are allowed 
to use minicom, for example, you can make so that

2a. Everyone is allowed to use minicom: one way to achieve this could 
be:

# chmod a+rwx /var/lock/serial
# chmod a+rw /dev/ttyS0 (или другое устройство)

Doing so, you grant access permissions on the specified devices and 
directory to everyone, that means they can access it not only by means 
of minicom program.

2b. Everyone is allowed to use minicom: another way to achieve this could 
be: 

# chgrp uucp /usr/bin/minicom
# chmod g+s  /usr/bin/minicom

3. Using the built-in minicom system for granting permissions to use 
it. This system can be enabled by making the minicom executable 
setUID root (chown root /usr/bin/minicom; chmod u+s /usr/bin/minicom).
This way doesn't look like a good one in terms of security; and it 
doesn't provide any outstanding conveniences as compared to other ones.

And there are a lot of other varints of solving the same task... some 
of them could be based on sudo program.


ATTENTION: In previous releases of the packge, lock files used to be created
in '/var/lock/' and not in '/var/lock/serial/' as described above.


imz@altlinux.ru, October 2001