I'm using Ubuntu 18.04 with nemo as the file manager, and out of nowhere I can no longer mount disks or partitions which show up just by double-clicking them, when just a few weeks ago this worked perfectly fine! Any idea what changed? Perhaps an update messed it up?
The error is:
Unable to mount NAME_OF_DISK. Not authorized to perform operation.
Screenshot from nemo file manager:
This answer doesn't seem to help me either, as I just booted up and have nothing open really. Repeated reboots don't solve the problem. How would I find out which application might be holding the lock? Mount Flashdrive: Not Authorized to perform operation.
Note that the work-around is to manually do it with sudo, but I really don't like having to use sudo! Ex:
sudo mkdir /media/mydisk
sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media/mydisk
Or this works too:
sudo gnome-disks
Then use the gnome "Disks" utility to mount via the GUI.
If I do this though I cannot view the mounted partition unless I also run my file manager as root. Ex:
sudo nemo
Then navigate around in a GUI file manage window with elevated permissions.
Update:
- possibly related to Polkit?? - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Polkit#Allow_mounting_a_filesystem_on_a_system_device_for_any_user
Related
- https://superuser.com/questions/1151993/usb-automount-fail-not-authorized--related to Polkit and
plugdevgroup?
(Chrome Remote Desktop seems to be a problem for a lot of things! It will also block you from being an admin to operate your own printer!)
Solved. For my particular case the problem was Chrome Remote Desktop. Uninstalling it solved it.
Source for the uninstall command was JVApen here.
I've had many problems with Chrome Remote Desktop on Ubuntu, so I'm not really sure what to do about it. For now I suppose I'll leave it uninstalled and try using NoMachine instead, although that requires messing with your router settings and opening up port-forwarding from the outside internet to your internal local area network, which Chrome Remote Desktop seems to avoid by (I'm guessing) instead using a reverse tunnel through an outgoing connection from your house out to a Google server. In other words, the Google approach is probably safer, and is certainly much more convenient, if only it worked. [UPDATE: I'm sticking with NoMachine. Here are some configuration settings I wrote down that you may find useful.]
Note that I originally installed Chrome Remote Desktop using these instructions here:
I then had this problem here:
I've also had problems with Chrome Remote Desktop taking over audio, and making my audio not play back, and other things like that. Google's support for it on Linux is somewhat poor, and I'm continually fighting with it it turns out.
Related:
Another suggestion to improve answer (my rep is too low to comment on ubuntu also I am using debian so please verify as it should be relevant to ubuntu, but not sure if the commands need to be translated). You need permissions to start/stop services either as root/sudo or another permission group specific to process & systemctl. Status should work without root/sudo permissions.
To see if the chrome-remote-desktop is running
If so, it will show [Active: active (running) since ... ]
Desktop - usb should mount automatically, you can select to mount, or use the command line to mnt assuming you have the permissions to mount as well.
When done
Then check to be sure all is running and well