Unable to access external drives

Question

I am no longer able to access external drives on my computer (running Ubuntu 18.04 LTS). It was working fine a few weeks ago, so I'm not sure what changed.

I get this error message when trying to open the drive in Nautilus, for both USB drives and my extra hard drive:

Unable to access "8.1 GB Volume"
Not authorized to perform action

When I run Nautilus as root, it doesn't even show the drives. I was able to run sudo gnome-disks and interact with the drives that way. If I just run gnome-disks, then I don't have permissions and get the same error message.

I don't have this issue on another Ubuntu 18.04 LTS machine with the same USB drive. Nautilus without root works fine. So I don't think the issue is with the drives but rather is with the computer.

Please show us, findmnt | grep media and getfactl /media/$USER — nobody, Nov 25 '19 at 18:17

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 08 '19 at 20:05

5

I finally figured it out. My user account was part of the chrome-remote-desktop group. Once I removed it from that group and restarted my computer, auto-mounting and accessing the drives works as expected.

I had added my user to the chrome-remote-desktop following this post: https://superuser.com/a/850359/588342. After doing so, chrome-remote-desktop auto-runs on startup. Instead of that, I just added a command to run it in "Startup Applications Preferences": /opt/google/chrome-remote-desktop/chrome-remote-desktop --start

answered Dec 08 '19 at 20:05

catanasian

61

Hello, what is your solution? Keep using remote-desktop and auto mount at the same time. I mean once you add your user back to that group chrome-remote-desktop auto mount is not working, but when you remove the user from that group, remote-desktop is not working. – sflee Jan 12 '20 at 12:49
1

I removed my user from the group chrome-remote-desktop and added chrome-remote-desktop to the startup applications via the GUI. Both auto mount and chrome-remote-desktop are working for me now. – catanasian Jan 14 '20 at 01:21
Thank you very much. – sflee Jan 14 '20 at 02:18

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 25 '19 at 17:28

1

Use command:

sudo chown yourusername:yourusername /media/yourusername/path_to_mounted_volume

In nautilus user mode the volumes are mounted in /media/yourusername/

Replace yourusername with your user name and path_to_mounted_volume with path from command:

ls -l /media/yourusername/

answered Nov 25 '19 at 17:28

kukulo

2,015

ls -l /media/yourusername/ returns total 0. There's no path_to_mounted_volume. – catanasian Nov 25 '19 at 17:32
First mount the volume using nautilus. The output should be somehow: drwxr-xr-x 11 root root 4096 júl 7 18:06 disk2 – kukulo Nov 25 '19 at 17:35
The d in drwxr-xr-x stands for directory. Of course your name will be different. – kukulo Nov 25 '19 at 17:36
Change yourusername to your user name. – kukulo Nov 25 '19 at 17:37
Trying to mount using Nautilus gives me the same error:
```
Not authorized to perform operation```
```
– catanasian Nov 25 '19 at 17:51
Use command sudo mkdir /media/disk2 and sudo mount /dev/sdbX /media/disk2 where replace sdbX with the disk from command lsblk. – kukulo Nov 25 '19 at 18:10
Then sudo chown yourusername: yourusername /media/disk2/ – kukulo Nov 25 '19 at 18:10
The first mount command worked, and after doing so the drive is accessible via nautilus (until it's unplugged). The sudo chown username:username /media/disk2/ gives me chown: changing ownership of '/media/usb_drive/': Operation not permitted – catanasian Nov 25 '19 at 18:18
Can you create a directory on the drive with sudo mkdir /media/disk2/my_dir ? – kukulo Nov 25 '19 at 18:27
Does the root have access to usb drive? – kukulo Nov 25 '19 at 18:28
Yeah, creating a directory worked but only as root. I also can create directories as root in nautilus but not without root. – catanasian Nov 25 '19 at 18:28
Let us continue this discussion in chat. – catanasian Nov 25 '19 at 18:29

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Feb 21 '20 at 06:24

0

I have tried it but still can't work. The workaround is keep username in chrome-remote-desktop. Remove chrome-remote-desktop service from systemctl.

sudo systemctl disable chrome-remote-desktop

Then add command /opt/google/chrome-remote-desktop/chrome-remote-desktop --start to "Startup Applications Preferences" via the GUI.

edited Feb 21 '20 at 06:24

Tejas Lotlikar

2,945
5
17
26

answered Feb 20 '20 at 22:49

skylence

1

# systemctl disable chrome-remote-desktopchrome-remote-desktop.service is not a native service, redirecting to systemd-sysv-install. Executing: /lib/systemd/systemd-sysv-install disable chrome-remote-desktop – James Bowery Mar 01 '20 at 19:27
Didn't work after systemctl disable and run on startup. Still get "Not authorized...." even after reboot. – James Bowery Mar 01 '20 at 19:45
Worked after # gpasswd -d myusername chrome-remote-desktop so I'm not sure why you said "keep username in chrome-remote-desktop" when a prior answer said to delete it from chrome-remote-desktop and gave the other commands you gave. ie: The prior answer gave the correct solution at least for me but apparently did more than you needed. – James Bowery Mar 01 '20 at 19:55

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 04 '20 at 15:35

0

Today I had the same issue with my external 500gb hdd, I did next, it helped me:

sudo apt remove chrome-remote-desktop

answered Apr 04 '20 at 15:35

Volodymyr Oliinyk

53
4

Unable to access external drives

4 Answers4

Linked