[SOLVED]K3b cdrecord has no permission to open the device

[sunrat]

Just posting for info as I fixed it.K3b showed the above message when trying to burn a data CD (haven't done that for years). Ownership of /usr/bin/cdrdao and /usr/bin/wodim were set to root:root so user couldn't run them. Set their group ownership to cdrom. User should already be in cdrom group.

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chown root:cdrom /usr/bin/wodim
chown root:cdrom /usr/bin/cdrdaoWorks now. I found the solution in a 2016 thread at ubuntuforums.

[melmarker]

Hmm - we call it better "kind of work"™ - it really should not called "solution".

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=731460 - if one don't care about the wording ...

It might be that nobody cares about such ancient things like cd and dvd-recording (except Jörg Schilling). The only problem is that no downstream cares about Jörg Schilling - for a very good reason.

[sunrat]

cdrecord was forked in 2006 to cdrkit and ties with Schilling were cut then. This issue is either a legacy bug in K3b, which shouldn't even care about cdrecord, or a bug in packaging which should install those packages with ownership which makes it possible to run them as normal user.I just wanted to burn a data CD full of mp3 files which will play in my 10 year old car.
I get the impression you are right that nobody cares about CD and DVD recording. If it's as simple as changing group ownership of the installed programs it's hard to imagine why the maintainers/packagers wouldn't have done that long ago.

[melmarker]

i would bet that something can be done via policykit - at least i suspect it. Not really my area of expertise, i leave the polkit things alone and to the people who have the knowledge

[Colonel Panic]

Thread bump : I've found a solution here;

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1032903/problem-with-k3b-in-18-04-releases-cdrecord-has-no-permission-to-open-the-devi

[sunrat]

Necobump for a 5 year old thread in which a solution is in the first post? Weird. 

[decuser]

So, it's been what, a bit longer? Still worth bumping. The replies knocked on the solution, but here it is 2025 and it still "works" good on ya mate.