Member Avatar for Xozz

I'm trying to save something on my external HD, but I get this error:

Unable to access "TOSHIBA EXT"

Not authorized to perform operation (polkit authority not available and caller is not uid 0)

I made a snapshot of the error window, but that doesn't go to well either. I would say, this is enough information to help me out. If not, we'll see later.

I use Ubuntu 20.10

Leon

Edited by Xozz
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that dialog usually means your file manager asked udisks to mount the drive, but it could not talk to a running polkit authority or desktop auth agent. A reboot can mask it because D-Bus/polkit and the session agent start cleanly on the next boot. For anyone who hits this again, polkit provides the org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1 service and udisks relies on it to authorize mounts. (wiki.ubuntu.com)

Quick checks you can run the next time it happens:

# polkit and udisks should be "active (running)"
systemctl --no-pager status polkit udisks2

# look for recent errors
journalctl -b -u polkit -u udisks2 --no-pager | tail -n 80

# confirm a desktop polkit agent is running for your session
ps aux | grep -E 'polkit.*agent|polkit-gnome-authentication-agent'

If you use Xfce, Cinnamon, Unity, or a minimal WM, install a user-session agent and autostart it (GNOME and MATE ship their own). For Ubuntu, this works well: sudo apt install policykit-1-gnome, then ensure polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1 starts with your session. (packages.ubuntu.com)

Hardware angle (piggybacking on and ): 2.5" USB HDDs are bus‑powered and marginal power can trigger USB resets that look like permission or mount errors. Check for resets with dmesg | grep -i usb, try a different port/cable, or use a powered hub/Y‑cable. If you are stuck and just need the data right now, a safe workaround is to mount it manually as root: sudo mkdir -p /mnt/usb && sudo mount /dev/sdXN /mnt/usb (replace sdXN with your partition), then fix the polkit/agent issue later.

Side note: Ubuntu 20.10 reached end of life on July 22, 2021. If you are still on it, upgrading to a supported release brings newer polkit/udisks and bug fixes. (fridge.ubuntu.com)

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Member Avatar for rproffitt

I see this question has a lot of prior discussions found with https://www.google.com/search?&q=polkit+authority+not+available

Lots of ways to tackle this one.

PS. Last week I took a day to test out about 20 laptop drives (mostly HDDs and a few SSDs. It was slow going and "interesting" errors showed up on two bad drives. There was nothing wrong with the OS or adapter. These few drives were just bad. Most of the drives were from the office where we had upgraded our last HDDs to SSD. A few were unknown condition so we wanted to find out so we could see what to keep as spares for really cheap repairs and what to get rid of because failing drives can cause techs to spend days trying to find out what's wrong.

Edited by rproffitt because: Add PS.
Member Avatar for Xozz

Right now I'm not really in the mood for reading all those entries. Maybe tomorrow. Thanks anyway.

Member Avatar for rproffitt

I can't tell you what it is this time so I related where I find things to read and try. Also shared last week's drive testing that spewed so many error messages on the bad drives.

Is there something not-so-stock with this Ubuntu?

Member Avatar for Xozz

The problem solved itself. I started up Linux today and now I can use the device.

commented: Yes I often forget the old "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" - The IT Crowd. +15
Member Avatar for gmbseoxx

Some external hard drives draw their power from the USB port and ... You should never lose data because an external USB hard drive fails.

commented: Please tell everyone how to avoid this loss as so many do over and over. +15
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