Re: XFCE--can't mount USB devices

On Wed 12 Oct 2011 at 22:09:53 -0400, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:

Took me a bit to figure out why "restart" worked by "shutdown" didn't,
until I realized that I'm not "brian"...

Sorry - it was a copy and paste from a testing directory without too
much scrutinising.

What is the overall view of this issue? Is this a bug? Is your solution
the right one? Should it be fed back to the XFCE team? From my
perspective, this should Just Work, and the user shouldn't be expected
to figure out a solution like this....

A working XFCE does not depend on consolekit; it is only recommended by
xfce4-session. Shutdown, restart and mounting would have to be handled
by sudo or su and pmount, as you have done. Forget about the desktop
experience, you cannot have it unless you install policykit and udisks.

However, policykit-1 depends on consolekit and once consolekit is there
it refuses to give policykit the ok for mounting etc unless it trusts
the login method. GDM, KDM and LightDM can convince consolekit that
they are to be trusted; XDM and startx cannot. XDM could be made to but
hasn't been re-educated yet. I think it is impossible for startx to get
on with consolekit as it is now.

But just because consolekit is so bloody-minded doesn't mean policykit
is inclined the same way. So talk to it directly though localauthority.
Policykit may have brought a friend when it was installed (and there is
nothing which can be done about that) but this acquaintance doesn't
bring anything to the party so deserves to be ignored.

The solution is a legitimate one. You lose any benefits consolekit has
to offer but whether it matters to you depends on what you are doing.

Consolekit is regarded as a core OS service and is only doing what it
was designed to do. The onus would seem to be on other programs to
co-operate with it and for you to use them. 'Just Working' didn't
because you didn't! Some of the post-Squeeze XFCE documentation possibly
needs altering to reflect how the change in consolekit behaviour affects
XDM and startx users.



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