Mount Flashdrive: Not Authorized to perform operation

Question

At first this issue seemed to be related solely to usb's. When I insert a USB i get "Unable to mount xGb volume Not Authorized to perform operation"

Previously it would prompt for root password to mount. Upon closer examination this appears to be related to the privilege escalation prompt. Any feature that would normally require a root password doesn't prompt therefore is denied.

As another example under System Settings > User Accounts I can't click the unlock button. Previously it would prompt for root, now I no longer even have the option.

Edit: I know how Sudo works, but why isn't this happening through the GUI? Previously if you plugged in a flash drive it'd prompt for PW then mount automagically. It seems to be an issue with GUI privilege escalation in general not just mounting drives. Even if I go to Disks and click mount it doesn't mount because it never prompts for PW.

score 51 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 10 '20 at 22:23

51

In Ubuntu 18, this error is caused by Chrome Remote Desktop. The solution is:

Stop the Chrome Remote Desktop Service:

/opt/google/chrome-remote-desktop/chrome-remote-desktop --stop

Open all external disks, that logo appears

Start again the Chrome remote desktop service:

/opt/google/chrome-remote-desktop/chrome-remote-desktop --start

I think you have to do this after each reboot.

edited Mar 10 '20 at 22:23

Jason Liu

117

answered Feb 01 '20 at 22:47

Roger Gomez Nieto

616

1

That quite unexpectedly worked like a charm! Thanks a lot! – Roman Golyshev Mar 05 '20 at 23:31
1

:O It works for me too. Any reason why? – Joao Carlos Mar 11 '20 at 11:44
3

This worked for me as well. I removed the chrome-remote-desktop for good. Thank you – taksan Mar 12 '20 at 11:14
5

to remove remote desktop execute sudo apt remove chrome-remote-desktop – vozman Apr 16 '20 at 15:55
1

Awkwardly intelligent! – Zahid Gill Jun 23 '20 at 21:15
1

wow. this is still happening it seems--i'm on xubuntu 20.04 – Ben S. May 03 '21 at 15:05
Omg, it can't be thi- – testing_22 Jan 27 '22 at 18:30

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 16 '15 at 04:39

6

You have already opened some application which is holding the mount for lock so you are not able to mount it. The application might be gparted,ubuntu-installer or others.

answered Jul 16 '15 at 04:39

privatejava

167

1

I just logged into system. – Andrii Muzychuk Apr 04 '16 at 05:45
May be some startup program or service is mounting it. – privatejava Apr 04 '16 at 08:16
1

And how is one supposed to know what application is holding the mount for lock? – Silvio Levy Sep 20 '16 at 17:33
you are awesome! I had gparted opened haha – pjnovas Nov 10 '16 at 03:43
2

In my case the problem was Chrome Remote Desktop. Uninstalling it fixed my issue. See here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1196248/automount-when-clicking-on-disks-in-gui-file-manager-suddenly-stopped-working-in/1196273#1196273. – Gabriel Staples Dec 15 '19 at 06:16

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 20 '19 at 18:16

0

I recently has this issue as a result of having installed Chrome Remote Desktop. Other commenters have suggested uninstalling it however I use it often and have trouble using other remote tools due to being on a university network. At any rate, killing all the processes which referred to chrome-remote-desktop worked for me.

answered Dec 20 '19 at 18:16

mmiles19

11

My related answer: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1196248/automount-when-clicking-on-disks-in-gui-file-manager-suddenly-stopped-working-in/1196273#1196273. Also, please update your answer to include the command you used to kill all processes which referred to chrome-remote-desktop. – Gabriel Staples Dec 21 '19 at 01:00
Side note: my answer above also recommends using NoMachine. You might give it a shot. They are a company attempting to become well-known by letting everyone use it for free, so they have put in a TON of work to make it highly-functional and bug-free, and I am very impressed. The never-ending bugs in Chrome Remote Desktop on Linux are killing me, so I think I'll stick with NoMachine. – Gabriel Staples Dec 21 '19 at 01:08
I was not interested in providing a comprehensive tutorial on killing processes. I simply ran 'ps -aux | grep google' and then 'kill -9 ' as anyone can learn on stack exchange. I have also successfully used chrome remote desktop regularly interruption-free after fixing an initial issue regarding the desktop session config, which can also be found with a quick search on stack exchange. – mmiles19 Dec 22 '19 at 19:42
Although this answer did not provide an example on how to solve the issue, indeed this is the reason for my case and a legit answer. I don't see any reason that it got downvoted. Upvoted from negative. – Jason Liu Mar 10 '20 at 00:21

rosch · Answer 4 · 2020-01-27T23:43:20.043

0

For me the missing bit was the user not being member of the group plugdev

Terminal way to add myuser to the group:

sudo usermod -aG plugdev myuser

After this I didn't even have to logout or restart any services.

edited Jan 27 '20 at 23:43

answered Jan 27 '20 at 23:28

rosch

7,828

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 28 '20 at 11:59

As a quikly workaround, if you open RemoteDesktop, and stop your computer to be accesible from Remote Acces section (click on the trash icon) then you recover the elevated privileges function. When you activate it again, the drive remains mounted but the elevation procces fails again

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Jun 25 '20 at 07:19

0

I was facing an issue with reading the hard disk drives.

The disk was actually /dev/sda8. I had to create a mount point.

sudo cd mkdir /media/mydisk
sudo mount /dev/sda8 /media/mydisk

And this worked for me.

To verify it, use

cd /media/mydisk 
ls

answered Jun 25 '20 at 07:19

Sreeragh A R

101

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Jul 31 '21 at 02:37

For me the most elegant solution was to remove my computer from https://remotedesktop.google.com/access due to the fact I was not using the remote access and left a dangling node and it looks like Linux was just trying to protect the system with "Not Authorized to perform operation" of new devices? Anyhow this worked for me.

score 0 · Answer 8 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

0

I posted my fix in another question before I saw this one:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall gnome-session

Please be cautious this might break some other packages. In which case try to reinstall the package.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

Community

1

answered Feb 05 '15 at 05:30

rodney

1

score -1 · Answer 9 · answered Dec 28 '19 at 11:35

-1

# place in 
#create dir if needed
#/etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/automount.pkla


[Allow Automount]
Identity=unix-group:plugdev
Action=org.freedesktop.udisks2.filesystem-mount*
ResultAny=yes
ResultInactive=yes
ResultActive=yes

[Allow Eject]
Identity=unix-group:plugdev
Action=org.freedesktop.udisks2.eject-media*
ResultAny=yes
ResultInactive=yes
ResultActive=yes

[Allow Mounting of fstab]
Identity=unix-group:plugdev
Action=org.freedesktop.udisks2.filesystem-fstab*
ResultAny=yes
ResultInactive=yes
ResultActive=yes

answered Dec 28 '19 at 11:35

Robert A

99

1

It would be better to surround your answer by some explanation. – zx485 Dec 28 '19 at 12:59
While the answer is correct, it misses explanation as @zx485 wrote.Here is info. – Timo Oct 12 '21 at 17:49

Mount Flashdrive: Not Authorized to perform operation

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