10.04 not authorized to mount usb drive

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Just for the record, I tried everything in this thread ... and nothing worked. Then, at the beginning, I noticed that someone said to un-install USBMOUNT. That worked for me, my MP3 thumb drive mounted itself as mass storage ... and I was able to write to the drive.

[Ronson76]

Are you using the nvidia driver, and if so, which one? I had exactly the same problem using the current version (as well as other issues, such as the machine not logging out correctly). Once I changed to v.173 the problem with mounting drives went away.

Exactly this solved my problem. I did nothing else but this.

[purvez]

The following worked for me too. However I have a USB wireless adaptor which stopped working and I had to do a second boot before it started working again. Not quite sure what happened but did give me a bit of a heart attack for a while!!

I still cannot reboot/shutdown from the desktop. Have to do 'sudo reboot' etc.

Thanks for the resolution on the USB sticks.

Purvez


Quote:
Originally Posted by dchky
That is NOT the answer at all - we all know we can manually mount our devices, that is not what is broken, please try to stay on topic.

The problem is in polkit, what fixed the problem for me was this:

(sudo if that's your thing) apt-get install policykit policykit-gnome policykit-desktop-privileges

Reboot. After this mounting drives appears to work as it should.

[elmy]

The following worked for me too. However I have a USB wireless adaptor which stopped working and I had to do a second boot before it started working again. Not quite sure what happened but did give me a bit of a heart attack for a while!!

I still cannot reboot/shutdown from the desktop. Have to do 'sudo reboot' etc.

Thanks for the resolution on the USB sticks.

Purvez


Quote:
Originally Posted by dchky
That is NOT the answer at all - we all know we can manually mount our devices, that is not what is broken, please try to stay on topic.

The problem is in polkit, what fixed the problem for me was this:

(sudo if that's your thing) apt-get install policykit policykit-gnome policykit-desktop-privileges

Reboot. After this mounting drives appears to work as it should.

The Policykit procedure worked for me also, but only until the next reboot, then it went back into its old habit.

If I remove / reinstall polciy kit again and then reboot, it fixes it again, but only for 1 reboot.

This is 1 part of a 3 part simultaneous problem:-

1) The USB Drive won't mount because its not authorised.
2) The audio does not work
3) The computer will not shutdown, it just logs out.

These 3 items are related, and yes the policykit does affect it, but so does uninstalling and reinstalling alsa-base and alsa-utils.

I fixed issue 2 (audio) by adding my user as a member of the the audio group (from terminal using sudo - otherwise it doesn't remember if you do it from the GUI). This works but not completley, sometimes I reboot and there is no ubuntu sound at login, but after logging in its fine (issue 1 and 3 still persist in this situation).

When I reboot and the ubuntu sound does play (about 25% of the time), then issue 1 and 3 go away and everything works.

I believe if someone can advise what group is responsible for USB permissions and Shutdown permissions, that adding the "logged in" user to it will fix it. I just don't know which groups (I tried disks, for the flash drive issue, but it didn't work)

[elmy]

I'm wondering though, how can the developers release 10.04 with all these bugs, and problems.
Seems to me, shouldn't have to be a unix guru to get some basic things done with your PC: yet, after switching to ubuntu, all I'm doing is searching through forums, decyphering obscure commands (that never work) for basic functions (i.e. access my cd drive !!) that the OS should do out-of-the-box, in the first place.

So I'm wondering: who is Ubuntu made for, after all?


stad

I'm afraid I agree with this, although I appreciate the complexities of operating systems, this sort of thing should be operating system 101.

Combined with the constant crashing, and this flash drive issue, it makes it nearly impossible to use.

A typical session for me on ubuntu 10.04.

Get up in morning, and check laptop for completed torrents:-
Laptop crashed during the night and is nearly melting because its so hot from sitting crashed with no fan running.

- Execute first reboot (holding the power key to shutdown. System boots but no ubuntu sound, I can use it (but it also means the flash drive won't mount, and I won't be able to shutdown unless I "sudo init 0" from the terminal.

- Decision, reboot again or log in and just continue torrenting. Usually I reboot because I need the drive space so I move completed torrents to my USB drive.

- 3 reboots or so later, I might get the Ubuntu Sound..Okay we are good. Login okay, start torrents again... and if I'm lucky it won't crash for a while. When it crashes (frequently) repeat the above procedure!

This is one of the many factors of frustration that has a cumulative effect on peoples mental status and combined with the other stressful factors and frustrations of "human ingenuity failing to reach the parts that only Heineken can reach" is the sort of thing that causes road rage!!! or worse!! in a need to vent the frustration. I'm lucky, I can walk away in disgust before the desire to smash my laptop against the wall takes over and then regretting my inability for self control. Not everybody is born with this same ability for self control and discipline.

Its at this point I reach for a can of "whoop ***" as it revitalises my attitude and restores my faith in humanity. A good thing too, or I'd have destroyed my laptop a dozen times by now.

[dbsjunk]

This is also happening to me, but in a slightly different manner:

If I am logged in to the console X session the USB disks will mount.

However, I get errors in other VNC sessions (e.g., extra X sessions) that I don't have permission to mount the disk. Indeed, if I am not logged in at the console the drive will not mount even though I am logged in via another VNC session.

This points to a more fundamental issue with the detection of when a user should have rights to do something.

This is on 10.10, by the way.

This appears to be the same as https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...us/+bug/518533

Interesting:
I can no longer shutdown from the menu bar at this point as others have said.
I could do this before I installed and ran VNC server.
I suspect this means that having two Gnome sessions running at once, or having one running inside VNC, caused the problem.
Possibly related, I ran into the also-reported problem that my VNC session started up with the key "d" mapped to "hide all windows" and had to unmap this. Perhaps there is some corruption going on here?

[Barney]

Uninstall USBMOUNT worked for me. No USB ports were functional; uninstalled usbmount, all okay, headphones, too.

[Barney]

The saga continued: Having again lost my usb ports, on 09/07, I posted ->
USB ports inop w/2.6.32-33
USB ports went inop with kernel 2.6.32-33 ??? All worked normally before.

usbmount installed/uninstalled, no difference.

Any help?
************

Much searching produced this fix: I used synaptic to install usb-modeswitch and usb-modeswitch-data. During the installation, synaptic requested that the 10.04.3 LiveCD be inserted - I did that, and the installation continued. After the installation, rather than reboot, I shutdown, removing the LiveCD while power was still on. After shutdown, I removed the unit's power cord, waited a few seconds, plugged it back in, and restarted the computer. Viola, all the usb ports are functioning properly!

Why the order of battle above, I don't know; but, it worked for me.

[Barney]

Again, the saga continues: One day later, no usb ports recognized; printer, usb portable hard drive, usb thumb drive.........looks as though all usb ports/functions just went bye-bye.

Any help?

[Barney]

Continuing right along: No usb ports this AM, serious head scratching, nothing in BIOS about usb, found system time in BIOS incorrect, hmmmm - changed battery on motherboard & set time and date, viola -- usb recognizes Kingston thumbdrive, plugged printer in/recognized, plugged Logitech headset in FREEZE --- usb ports disappear! Of course, removed headset, shutdown, pulled power cord out-put it back in, started up and thumb drive and printer still show. Logitech headset the culprit -- always worked fine before.

[edit] PulseAudio disabled some time ago, ALSA had been working just fine. Want to be able to use the usb Logitech headset with Skype.

Also discovered in synaptic - hardinfo - nice little package that tells one oodles of stuff about one's machine.

Searching now to see why headset may be screwing things up.