k3b will not mount optical drives unless as root while in a vnc session

English Hardware
1

I am able to use k3b just fine from my user account when at my server, however, when remoting into it I can only access the drives if I am root. Is there a setting that disallows me to use the drives while remoting into the machine?

using KDE in a fairly recent(no more than one month) fresh install of 12.1, two optical drives (dvd & bluray that both work great when logged in not remotely)

2

On 2012-08-18 10:16, mister sarcasm wrote:
>
> I am able to use k3b just fine from my user account when at my server,
> however, when remoting into it I can only access the drives if I am
> root. Is there a setting that disallows me to use the drives while
> remoting into the machine?

As you are not seating at the machine, the software does not allows you to use local things
such as the burner. It is intentional.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)

3

Thanks for your reply. I can see why as for security that this would be the way, however, is there a way to override this?

4

On 2012-08-19 01:56, mister sarcasm wrote:
>
> Thanks for your reply. I can see why as for security that this would be
> the way, however, is there a way to override this?

The problem with automatisms in Linux is that things are not that easy to do your way as they were 5
years ago, when things were more “classical”. I’m not that familiar with the actual method they use
to determine who is the local user. I think it was polkit

polkit
polkit-action polkit-config-file-validate polkit-kde-authorization
polkit-auth * polkit-gnome-authorization polkit-policy-file-validate

but these tools are nowhere in 12.1. I’m not sure what 12.1 uses - Linux is a fast moving target.

There was something else I should say… but it is 5:30 AM here and I should be sleeping. I can’t
remember the other thing that controls this.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 “Asparagus” GM (bombadillo))

5

I haven’t got a good handle on this. When you log in remotely, do you get an active session reported?

ck-list-session

If not, then polkit is probably preventing access to the device.

pkaction --list

The ‘org.freedesktop.udisks.filesystem-mount’ policy is probably relevant here . For reference, I have

 # pkaction --action-id org.freedesktop.udisks.filesystem-mount --verbose
org.freedesktop.udisks.filesystem-mount:
  description:       Mount a device
  message:           Authentication is required to mount the device
  vendor:            The udisks Project
  vendor_url:        http://udisks.freedesktop.org/
  icon:              drive-removable-media
  implicit any:      no
  implicit inactive: no
  implicit active:   yes

It could be altered to allow access by inactive sessions, but there are security issues obviously.

6

This guide may be of help too:

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