gnome-mount silently fails if permissions are wrong

[Daniel Abel]

Binary package hint: gnome-mount

If one sets permissions wrong, so that
$ gnome-mount --verbose -b -d ....
fails due to org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.PermissionDeniedByPolicy

then, by default (i.e. without running gnome-mount with the above -v and -b parameters) mounting will fail silently, without a gui error message.

This can happen, for example if the user manually sets the permissions in
System -> Administration -> Authorizations
 wrong, or if there is a bug in consolekit (the situation I'm in.)

This means that if there is such a permission problem, plugging in a usb thumbdrive causes the following: it gets recognized, an entry shows up in the "Places" menu, but clicking on it, to mount it, does nothing. This, (that doing a gui action has no effect and no error message) is highly frustrating.

For example, if
$ gnome-mount ....
fails due to giving the wrong device name, it shows a nice dialog. (Even when running that command from a terminal.) I think such a dialog would be needed for permissions problems, as well.

[Adam Guthrie (ispiked)]

I'm experiencing exactly the same issue and think it's caused by console-kit as well. I have two questions:
1) Are there any workarounds to this problem? and
2) What exactly is the bug in console-kit? Has one been filed?

[Daniel Abel (abeld)]

> 2) What exactly is the bug in console-kit? Has one been filed?
I filed one: see bug no. 221844 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/consolekit/+bug/221844) Note that there might be other relevant (possibly duplicate) bugs also filed by others, I didn't check now.

> 1) Are there any workarounds to this problem?
I don't remember exactly, but I think I couldn't figure out the consolekit bug, and thus the workaround I think I used was to give permissions to everyone (i.e. not just the currently active session) in System -> Administration -> Authorizations

But I might be wrong.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

thank you for your bug report, what ubuntu version do you use?

[Daniel Abel (abeld)]

It was hardy

Deciding whether the gnome-mount bug is still reproducible should be easy: after all it is just "fails silently if permission error". The cause of that permission error would be much harder to diagnose, but that is a consolekit bug anyway, so thats not this bugreport.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

could you give details on what "permission" was the issue? trying with devices in use or mounted by an another users displays an error as expected

[Daniel Abel (abeld)]

No, it was an "allow access" permission. In my case the lack of permission was caused by https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/consolekit/+bug/221844

I sort-of managed to reproduce the bug today on a not-too-out-of-date hardy system. I did the following:

1) Open System -> Administration -> Authorizations, set the "mount removable storage" permission for the active session to "No"

2) plug in pendrive

3) note that icon is not created on desktop (which is a plus, in the original bug it was created), but an entry shows up in the "Places" menu with "Mount .... pendrive" tooltip.

4) clicking on that entry in the "Places" menu has no effect.

So, apparently the bug is half gone: an icon is not added to the desktop, but the other half still remains: I assume that the entry in the places menu could be used for mounting it, and that clicking on in launches the mount operation, which silently fails.

[nick (nmn1)]

I have similar problem in Jaunty. Since some moment mounting drives from "Places" menu silently fails. How can I figure out, is this bug with permissions or not?

[Daniel Abel (abeld)]

try running gnome-mount from a terminal window, with the '--verbose' and '-b' parameters (don't forget to set a --device and --mount-point as well, see the example section in gnome-mount's manpage)

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

This package has been removed from Ubuntu. Closing all related bugs.