[IDEA] USB omnipotence

[revilodraw]

Here's the scene;

I have a USB device in my hand - it's mine, I own it, and I can do whatever I like with it - I can go and grab a hammer and smash it into a million pieces if I want.

When I plug it in to the USB port, Ubuntu mounts it to the desktop (nice) and all is good...
Then, I want to do stuff with it, like format it, put stuff on it, take stuff off it etc.. but I get permission problems - I know this is an ongoing issue in the forums.

I would like no permission problems - we have the physical device, and we should be able to do whatever we want with it, not have our OS tell us what we can and can't do..

:)

[MaX]

Yes, this is crucial.

You should automatically get write permission to USB drives (Cameras and such aswell).

USER CASE: My brothers Windows crashed (or rather his harddrive began failing), so I sent an Ubuntu DVD which he booted from.
When he wanted to copy the contents of his harddrive to his USB-HDD he didn't have permission. The whole episode ended with him getting a HDD to install windows on then rescue the data and getting a new harddrive.

As it is now he thinks the whole ubuntu debacle I put him through was a waste of time.

[Megatog615]

I believe this is actually a bug, and has been around for a while(ever since Ubuntu got the ability to automount things like this).

In fact just yesterday I had to mount my usb drive with sudo just to get it to work. Weird thing is, it's totally random whether or not I have to use sudo.

[aamukahvi]

I never had any problems with this... Works always.
During edgy dev there was a problem not being able to unmount usb drives but other than that everything has worked great.

[u-slayer]

+1

There should be an easy way to mount drives so that the user (me) can access them. Every time I mount a drive from the command line, I end up having to run gksudo nautilus just so I can edit my on file:( It's a pain.

[ironfistchamp]

Yeah I +1 this as well. Def needs sorting

[KaeseEs]

I *believe* the problem is that your USB drive is being auto-mounted with either messed-up ownership or messed-up privileges. This may be a result of it using the FAT32 filesystem (difficult to fix unless you reformat it to a nice unix filesystem), or it may be a problem with the automount system in GNOME (upstream can fix w/o too much trouble), or it may just be a config issue.

[Lord Illidan]

I *believe* the problem is that your USB drive is being auto-mounted with either messed-up ownership or messed-up privileges. This may be a result of it using the FAT32 filesystem (difficult to fix unless you reformat it to a nice unix filesystem), or it may be a problem with the automount system in GNOME (upstream can fix w/o too much trouble), or it may just be a config issue.

Dunno, I can automount very well with a freecom HDD, fat32 formatted. The problem is that if I switchuser, I can't even see it as another user.

[Wolki]

Every time I mount a drive from the command line, I end up having to run gksudo nautilus just so I can edit my on file:( It's a pain.

Are you using mount or pmount when mounting on the command line? Last one should allow you to access as user, and does not need sudo powers.