regression: local admin not authorized for many tasks

[Jamin W. Collins]

With 12.10 it looks like gnome-disk-utility has moved to using udisks2 behind the scenes. However, it appears that polkit entries were not created for most of the potential actions that can be taken within gnome-disks. Many of the actions result in an error like the following:

An error occured

Not authorized to perform operation (udisks-error-quark, 4)

I've received the above error when trying to use gnome-disks start a benchmark of a volume. This worked fine under 12.04 (via the gnome-disks precursor palimpsest and udisks).

Digging into this, it appears that there are a total of 38 possible polkit actions and local admins are only authorized by default for a total of three of them (via 10-vendor.d/com.ubuntu.desktop.pkla):

org.freedesktop.udisks2.filesystem-mount-system
org.freedesktop.udisks2.encrypted-unlock-system
org.freedesktop.udisks2.filesystem-fstab

Contrast this with the authorization for the previous udisk activities:
org.freedesktop.udisks.filesystem-*
org.freedesktop.udisks.drive-ata-smart*

Which covers 10 actions from what I can see.

For parity with previous releases I believe the following actions also need to be authorized for local admins:
org.freedesktop.udisks2.filesystem-mount [1]
org.freedesktop.udisks2.filesystem-unmount-others [1]
org.freedesktop.udisks2.ata-smart-* [2]

I'm sure there are others as there doesn't appear to be a direct 1:1 translation for some of the permissions.

This is a regression with regard to the previous 12.04 release and what local admin users were authorized to do.

[1] - covered previously by org.freedesktop.udisks.filesystem-*
[2]- covered previously by org.freedesktop.udisks.drive-ata-smart*

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10
Package: gnome-disk-utility 3.6.1-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-17.28-generic 3.5.5
Uname: Linux 3.5.0-17-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.6.1-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Oct 20 14:45:17 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release amd64 (20091027)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-disk-utility
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to quantal on 2012-10-12 (8 days ago)

[Johan Helgø (johelgo)]

Confirmed. Installed OS on my SSD, I deleted the partitions on my HDD during installation. Now I am not allowed to create new partition through disk utility --> cannot mount it either
It gives the error mentioned in bug description.

Any workaround for this? I kind of need that extra space :S

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Jamin W. Collins (jcollins)]

The attached file is a very permissive work around for the issue, it will allow local admins to do any of the potential udisk2 actions. Simply place it in /var/lib/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d.

[Johan Helgø (johelgo)]

Well, I found a workaround for my spesific problem: start the OS installation again, go to the screen where you can format/partition hard-drives. I did what I had to do there, then cancelled the installation and rebooted. Now I can mount/unmount the hard drive and I can use it. However, If I try to format it, then I get the error message again.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

still happening on 13.04

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.