Nautilus doesn't mount in Xmonad: Not authorized to perform operation

Question

I'm using Xmonad as my window manager.

In the application nautilus, whenever I try to mount my usb sticks, it shows me the dialog "Not authorized to perform operation."

I have tried putting this in ~/.xsession file:

nautilus --no-desktop -n &

But that doesn't work.

This is my current ~/.xsession file:

#!/bin/bash

gnome-settings-daemon &
exec dbus-launch --exit-with-session xmonad

Also, when I start a pure gnome session, everything works fine. Any idea on how to make nautilus ask password or mount the usb stick on clicking it in the nautilus ?

Solution 1

1. Open Disks from Dash

   

2. Choose the desired disk/partition

   

3. Edit Mount Options

   

4. Uncheck require additional authorization

   

Solution 2

You need to start polkit in your xsession.

You most likely have a .desktop file in /etc/xdg/autostart in the path somewhere with the full path to your polkit daemon.

For me adding /usr/lib/policykit-1-gnome/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1 in ~/.Xsession fixed the issue.

Comments

[bleeves]

Have you tried launching nautilus as root from a terminal?

[Sibi]

@bleeves yes. But I want to use nautilus as a normal user. Security wise, opening nautilus is a bad practice.

[Sibi]

^ Opening nautilus as a root user is a bad practice.

[bleeves]

Agreed. I was asking if he had tried sudo to ascertain the reason it was locked, not recommending an answer.

[Robert Cutajar]

There must be a permission to be granted somewhere... I would not accept solutions that require root access or modifying fstab. It is most likely with polkit setup and again, I wouldn't like to modify the polkit rules.

[Enkouyami]

This didn't work for exFAT.

[Sibi]

Do you know what polkit agent needs to be run on Unity or a gnome session in Ubuntu ?

[Robert Cutajar]

I'm not sure, try examine apt-cache search polkit. I've seen somewhere, but cannot remember, that gnome session possibly has the agent built in. The mate package might work for you. See man pkcheck and try testing some admin action with the --allow-user-interaction parameter to see if you have things wired up.