[LMDE] ntfs-3g unable to mount NTFS volumes as unprivileged user

[randomizer]

This bug affects all Linux Mint editions based on Debian Testing.

By default, Debian does not configure ntfs-3g to allow mounting a volume as an unprivileged user, as it can in all Ubuntu-based editions. I believe that the primary reason for this is that the setuid bit is not set for security reasons. The current version of ntfs-3g now (finally) supports a debconf option to install ntfs-3g as setuid root, and this can be done after installation using dpkg-reconfigure.

Unfortunately because of my lack of knowledge I have not worked out a way to make this permanently allow unprivileged mounting of NTFS volumes. Upon reconfiguring ntfs-3g it is possible to mount the volumes fine. However, after a reboot it no longer works even though ntfs-3g is still setuid root.

In order to maintain consistency between the Debian-based and Ubuntu-based editions of Mint I think this should be looked at.

[randomizer (randomizer)]

After some digging around I think that the issue can be fixed by both ensuring that ntfs-3g is setuid root and also slightly modifying the udisks policy for filesystem mounts. I've attached a patch that I think will fix this but I don't have LMDE installed outside of a VM at the moment so I can't test it myself.

[Clement Lefebvre (clementlefebvre)]

I won't include this in the current iteration (it would deserve to make the cut prior to RC to safeguard us from potential breakages). In the meantime, if you dig deeper into this, please let me know and we can hopefully include it the next time around.

[chemicalfan (mike-lumsden)]

Is this still an issue in the current LMDE release? If not, it should be marked as Fix Released