hal-storage-fixed-mount refused uid 1000

Twice over the last couple of weeks, I've added a new drive to my Kubuntu box and run into the error hal-storage-fixed-mount refused uid 1000 when I attempted to access any existing partitions via Dolphin or Konqueror. The first time this happened was with a Windows drive with NTFS partitions and the second time with a drive from another linux box with reiserfs partitions.

While I am aware that these issues can probably be fixed by editing the /etc/fstab directly, I was after a more user-friendly solution. Googling and the ubuntu fora pointed me to what appeared to be the optimal solution - using a script named Diskmounter to automatically detect and insert the requisite entries into /etc/fstab. While this wasn't as user-friendly as I did not want to use the command line, it was pretty simple and effective. The updated instructions to use the script are as follows (but you might want to first look at solution 2 further below):

1. Open a terminal and download the script using wget http://media.ubuntu-nl.org/scripts/diskmounter.
2. Backup your existing fstab using something like sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.pre.diskmounter.
3. Type sudo bash diskmounter to run the script. The script is interactive and optionally enables write access for NTFS partitions (untested).
4. The script will very likely state that your windows partitions were detected and entries added to /etc/fstab successfully.

However, when I ran into the same issue with my reiserfs partitions, the diskmounter script, which I thought worked for all types of partitions, didn't work. Looking at the comments in the script, it appears that it works only for certain types. To quote:

# This utility searches for available HFS+, NTFS and FAT32 partitions, creates
# mount points for them and adds them to /etc/fstab

So, back I was at square one and with the same error message. This time though, rather than heading straight to Google, I looked around in Kubuntu first and sure enough, there was a section dedicated to Disk & Filesystems where I could solve this.

1. Backup your existing /etc/fstab if you want to be cautious.
2. In Kubuntu, open system settings, click on the advanced tab and navigate to "Disk & Filesystems". If on a non-kubuntu KDE box, you can access this via KControl, System Administration, Disk & Filesystems. You will need to enter Administrator mode.
3. You should be able to see the newly added drive here and all its partitions (which are very likely disabled). Right click on one of the large partitions and select modify.
4. Under mount point, specify something like /media/test1 where test1 is the name by which the partition is to be addressed.
5. Check the "Enable at start up" and "Writeable" checkboxes as required.
6. Change Mount permission to Any user may enable/disable anytime.
7. Click OK and a prompt should appear asking if you want to create the mount point. Say yes and that partition should now be accessible.
8. Repeat for other partitions, if any.

The step wherein you change the Mount Permission is very likely where the actual hal-storage-fixed-mount error is being solved - I haven't tested this explicitly - as it appears to be a user access error message. I am also unsure if this method will also work for NTFS drives, but it might be worth a shot first before using the diskmounter utility.

If you compare the before and after versions of your /etc/fstab, you should be able to see the new entries that have been added.

hth.

Update [April 12 2008]:
The next version of Kubuntu - Hardy Heron / 8.04 - will have better NTFS support (using NTFS-3G) and allow write access to NTFS partitions, hitherto a risky proposition. It is out in a couple of weeks!