Device links in Nautilus (Files) sidebar won't mount/unmount

Question

I have set up my MacBook Pro 8,1 to dual-boot Ubuntu 13.04 + OSX Mountain Lion.

After the installation was finished I changed my Linux UID to 501 so that it matches the UID on the OSX install. I updated all file permissions, Ubuntu seemed to have no problems.

I can mount the OSX partitions in terminal (and I don't need sudo to do it):

/usr/bin/udisks --mount /dev/sda3

and they mount to

/media/<device name>

I can also read the OSX partitions and write to the unjournaled OSX partition.

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In Nautilus there are links to the partitions under Devices in the sidebar, but these links won't mount the partitions they link to. I get a message that the location cannot be displayed and I don't have the necessary permissions.

If I mount the partitions via the terminal first, then the sidebar links do work, but the links won't work to unmount without authenticating, a message pops up saying they were mounted by another user.

According to /var/log/syslog, clicking the link uses the correct UID

Jul 15 17:42:34 silverfox dbus[930]: [system] Activating service name='org.freedesktop.hostname1' (using servicehelper)
Jul 15 17:42:34 silverfox dbus[930]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.hostname1'
Jul 15 17:42:41 silverfox udisksd[1920]: Mounted /dev/sda3 at /media/mathew/book on behalf of uid 501
Jul 15 17:50:24 silverfox dbus[930]: [system] Activating service name='org.freedesktop.hostname1' (using servicehelper)
Jul 15 17:50:24 silverfox dbus[930]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.hostname1'

Jul 15 17:50:26 silverfox udisksd[1920]: Cleaning up mount point /media/mathew/book (device 8:3 is not mounted)
Jul 15 17:50:26 silverfox udisksd[1920]: Unmounted /dev/sda3 on behalf of uid 501

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What's the difference between what I do via the terminal and what Nautilus is doing?

Any advice on how can I dig a bit further into understanding and fixing this?

Answer 1

Well I never found out what i did wrong exactly, so i deleted everything and re-installed. This time I created another admin user first, then used that to create my user with uid 501, instead of starting with uid 1001 and changing to 501.

I'm newish to linux so I didn't do this the most efficient way, but it seems to have worked. This is what i did:

In terminal with my first admin user login

sudo useradd -u 501 -m <my new admin user>
sudo adduser <my new admin user> sudo

looking in my bash history, i seem to have done both of these, which I'm sure is redundant:

sudo adduser -s /bin/bash <my new admin user>
sudo usermod -s /bin/bash <my new admin user>

then i added my user to all the groups my first admin user was part of groups

sudo adduser <my new admin user> adm
sudo adduser <my new admin user> cdrom
sudo adduser <my new admin user> dip
sudo adduser <my new admin user> plugdev
sudo adduser <my new admin user> lpadmin
sudo adduser <my new admin user> sambashare

the dialout group I added because it had group id 20, the same group id my osx login, not sure if this is required or ideal but it is what I did:

sudo adduser <my new admin user> dialout

sudo passwd <my new admin user>

sudo apt-get install gksu
gksudo gedit /etc/login.defs

I edited login.defs to change the minimum user id to 500, so my new id would show up in the login screen

then I realised the default group for my new user was set to 1001 not 501, just to keep things neat I set this to 501. If I really understood the implications, perhaps I would have set it to 20 to match my osx user perfectly

sudo groupmod -g 501 <my new admin group>
find / -group 1001 -exec chgrp -h 501 {} \;
sudo find / -group 1001 -exec chgrp -h 501 {} \;
sudo usermod -g 501 <my new admin user>

and set my default shell to bash

sudo adduser -s /bin/bash <my new admin user>

Nautilus now seems to work as expected.