IsCallerPrivileged error when trying to mount USB media

[Courtney Rosenthal]

Binary package hint: kdebase-kio-plugins

Description: Ubuntu 8.04.1
Release: 8.04
kdebase-kio-plugins 4:3.5.9-0ubuntu7.3

Recently, mounting of USB devices has stopped working. I've seen this with both USB memory stick and MP3 player.

The symptom is that when I insert the unmounted device I get the icon in my task bar.

When I click and select mount I get a popup window that says:

    IsCallerPrivileged() failed

See attached screenshot.

The same thing happens when I run from the command line:

    $ kio_media_mounthelper -m media:/sdd1

Other uses are reporting this problem too:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=876379

[Courtney Rosenthal (courtneyr)]

After a reboot, the problem cleared itself. USB media can now be mounted without problem.

[Andreas Moog (ampelbein)]

This bug report is being closed due to your last comment regarding this being fixed with an update. For future reference you can manage the status of your own bugs by clicking on the current status in the yellow line and then choosing a new status in the revealed drop down box. You can learn more about bug statuses at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Status . Thank you again for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Feel free to submit any future bugs you may find.

[Prateek Karandikar (prateek.karandikar)]

Andreas: The comment did not say anything about the bug being fixed. Do you think it's acceptable functionality to have to reboot a system to be able to mount USB devices?

I got the same error just now, and I confirm this as a valid bug.

I'm using Kubuntu 8.04 with KDE 3.5.9.

[n0PxN0p (n0pxn0p)]

8.10 with latest updates

Same problem.

[typo (gnomeuser8)]

I'm using GNOME and I do have the same problem.

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

Probably a hal problem then.

[Gediminas Paulauskas (menesis)]

I'm using GNOME and also get this error after inserting a SD card into card reader.
However, when I connect a phone through a USB cable, it is discovered properly.

[Izzy (izzy-qumran)]

I've got the same problem for a couple of months now. I can confirm it is a hal problem: My usual work-around is to restart the hal daemon (/etc/init.d/hal restart). After that it is possible again to mount those USB devices - but you always have to put in your password then. After a complete reboot, however, it works completely fine (without the need of entering the password) for about 24 hours up to a few days (not sure depending on what). But the problem is sure to re-appear then. As permanent reboots are not convenient (remember we are not running on Windows, where that would be normal), I mostly use above hald work-around - still not completely convenient, but better than a reboot.

Kubuntu 8.04 (including the full Gnome install) with the latest updates applied, kernel 2.6.24-23-generic (in case it matters).

[Izzy (izzy-qumran)]

Bad news: No my work-around of restarting the HAL daemon is no longer working - all that's left is to mount new devices manually at a shell prompt. Some updates have been applied since my last comment:

Kernel 2.6.24-24-generic
Hal: 0.5.11~rc2-1ubuntu7
DBus: 1.1.20-1ubuntu3.3

After a reboot, however, everything works again - at least for some hours. Latest after 48h, it breaks again. Did not yet try to simply restart KDE instead of rebooting (which would reveal the entire issue clearly related to KDE), will do that next.

But again to make it clear: Neither a reboot nor a KDE restart can be a permanent solution to the issue. Once I have my desktop arranged and am in the middle of work, with a couple of apps open, both would always mean to redo those steps. You can imagine this not being any fun when one is in the middle of some work to be done. This is clearly a show-stopper which should urgently be fixed (not waiting for the next LTS).

[Izzy (izzy-qumran)]

Correction: Due to a too small terminal window, "dpkg -l" was cutting of the version numbers. Using "apt-cache show" I missed that it listed multiple sources. So versions above should correctly read:

Kernel: 2.6.24-24.61 (generic - just updated now)
Hal: 0.5.11~rc2-1ubuntu8.3
DBus: 1.1.20-1ubuntu3.3

Moreover I just found information at http://svn.pardus.org.tr/browse/2008/desktop/freedesktop/?view=log&root=pardus&pathrev=55478 that there was a typo in ConsoleKit causing the described "IsCallerPrivileged() failed", having been fixed in r51558 at Aug 08, 2008. Is that related? If so, did the fix make it into the packages (so it must be something different we experience here)?

[Izzy (izzy-qumran)]

Update: I found a new work-around. While KDE has problems with fstab entries starting with "UUID=" (results in "permission denied" when trying to mount that drive via the desktop icon), the following worked like a charm:

/dev/disk/by-uuid/FD71-883A /media/disk auto rw,user,noauto 0 0

Note that this is using the UUID as well - but being a (link to) a real device file (which seems to be what KDE requires), KDE accepts it just fine. While I just got the "IsCallerPrivileged failed" without this fstab entry, after enabling it KDE immediately mounted the device as it used to do before: No error, no warning, no password request.

Still it is to be considered a work-around: One cannot expect "non-techie users" to create such a fstab entry for each device (USB-disk, PDAs, mobiles, memory cards, etc.) in advance. But if anybody has one such device regularly in use (like I mount my PDA each morning to xfer data I need during the day), this work-around will be quite helpful I guess.

Looking forward to the real solution :)

[dino99 (9d9)]

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/hal/