Tuesday, August 03, 2010
Showing unmounted internal partitions in Xfce4.6 or LXDE or *Box minimal DEs
Laptop: DELL Inspiron 6400 - T5500 Core2Duo with 1G Ram.
Disk Partitions:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 63 96389 48163+ de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 * 96390 114921471 57412541 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 114921472 149997567 17538048 5 Extended
/dev/sda4 149998905 156296384 3148740 db CP/M / CTOS / ...
/dev/sda5 114923520 131338239 8207360 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 131340288 133437439 1048576 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7 133439488 149997567 8279040 83 Linux
Disk Partitions:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 63 96389 48163+ de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 * 96390 114921471 57412541 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 114921472 149997567 17538048 5 Extended
/dev/sda4 149998905 156296384 3148740 db CP/M / CTOS / ...
/dev/sda5 114923520 131338239 8207360 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 131340288 133437439 1048576 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7 133439488 149997567 8279040 83 Linux
OS: Arch Linux (/dev/sda7) with Xfce4.6, LXDE, FluxBox installed.
Primary WM/DE: Xfce4.6
Primary FileManager: PcManFM (0.9.7)
Daemons: HAL, DBUS, Gamin
Issue: Unable to view internal paritions (/dev/sda2 and /dev/sda5) from PcManFM.
So I don't want to add manual entries in /etc/fstab. I want my file manager to just mount the partitions on request by left clicking on the side pane. However both PcManFm and Thunar (and thunar-volman) do not even show the volumes on the left.
Solution(s) so far:
1. Install gvfs (pacman -S gvfs)
2. Restart X or restart DBUS
3. Open the /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.udisks.policy file and take a backup copy of this file first.
4. Then find and change to the following in the above file:
<action id="org.freedesktop.udisks.filesystem-mount">
<description>Mount a device</description>
<description xml:lang="da">Montér en enhed</description>
<message>Authentication is required to mount the device</message>
<message xml:lang="da">Autorisering er påkrævet for at montere et fil system</message>
<defaults>
<allow_any>yes</allow_any>
<allow_inactive>yes</allow_inactive>
<allow_active>yes</allow_active>
</defaults>
</action>
<action id="org.freedesktop.udisks.filesystem-mount-system-internal">
<description>Mount a system-internal device</description>
<description xml:lang="da">Montér en intern enhed</description>
<message>Authentication is required to mount the device</message>
<message xml:lang="da">Autorisering er påkrævet for at montere et fil system</message>
<defaults>
<allow_any>yes</allow_any>
<allow_inactive>no</allow_inactive>
<allow_active>yes</allow_active>
</defaults>
</action>
¶ 22:26 Solution(s) so far:
1. Install gvfs (pacman -S gvfs)
2. Restart X or restart DBUS
3. Open the /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.udisks.policy file and take a backup copy of this file first.
4. Then find and change to the following in the above file:
<action id="org.freedesktop.udisks.filesystem-mount">
<description>Mount a device</description>
<description xml:lang="da">Montér en enhed</description>
<message>Authentication is required to mount the device</message>
<message xml:lang="da">Autorisering er påkrævet for at montere et fil system</message>
<defaults>
<allow_any>yes</allow_any>
<allow_inactive>yes</allow_inactive>
<allow_active>yes</allow_active>
</defaults>
</action>
<action id="org.freedesktop.udisks.filesystem-mount-system-internal">
<description>Mount a system-internal device</description>
<description xml:lang="da">Montér en intern enhed</description>
<message>Authentication is required to mount the device</message>
<message xml:lang="da">Autorisering er påkrævet for at montere et fil system</message>
<defaults>
<allow_any>yes</allow_any>
<allow_inactive>no</allow_inactive>
<allow_active>yes</allow_active>
</defaults>
</action>
5. To summarise the above change(s)
1. Mount a device - allow_any is yes, allow_active is yes
2. Mount a file system internal - allow_any is yes, allow_active is yes
6. Thats it. Now restart X or restart dbus (/etc/rc.d/dbus restart) whichever works and launch PCManFM. It should now automatically show your internal partitions and clicking on it will automatically mount them. Right click on side-bar to unmount them when done.
7. As an alternative, you can also install gigolo (though not in pacman repos, so you'd have configure, build and install. More on gigolo here: http://www.uvena.de/gigolo/index.html
8. AFAIK there is no native support in Thunar for mounting internal partitions dynamically (i.e no fstab entries), but PCManFM should be good enough.
9. Nautilus can also be installed standalone (fewer dependencies to gnome) and will pickup the above changes.
I'm yet to find a way to make Thunar automatically recognize and mount internal partitions. More on this space later..