Unable to mount HDDs, undable to reboot, logout, or shutdown

[schema]

I am having a persistent problem that needs an alternate work-around. I am having problem with priv esc with sudo command. I am unable to mount my devices with
sudo apropos mountall. I am also unable to reboot, restart, or log out, even with sudo shutdown commands. here is a screenshot of the error output:

[b4d_bl0ck]

I am unable to mount my devices with sudo apropos mountall.

?!?
schema, I told you yesterday to give:

Code Select Expand

apropos mountbut do you know what apropos does? Or can i give you whichever command i want and you will execute it for me?

I am also unable to reboot, restart, or log out, even with sudo shutdown commands.

Are you sure you didn't remove startup services like PolicyKit?

P.S. Man, we cannot tell you everything from the basics... it's better learning by yourself reading guides and manuals. Also google is a friend (a bastard one, but useful).

Have fun! ;)

[ZEROF]

Hi,

From provided information we can assist you a lot. First you need to check you BackBox ISO MD5 hash. Next from what kind of media you run BBox installation (USB,CD,SD ..) ? Did you formated your hard and do you have multi boot system etc ...If you see that this will take a lot of your time, you can run BBox in VirtualBox or vmware player without problem, if not USB live etc ..

Cheers !

[schema]

I am unable to mount my devices with sudo apropos mountall.

?!?
schema, I told you yesterday to give:

Code Select Expand

apropos mountbut do you know what apropos does? Or can i give you whichever command i want and you will execute it for me?

I am also unable to reboot, restart, or log out, even with sudo shutdown commands.

Are you sure you didn't remove startup services like PolicyKit?

P.S. Man, we cannot tell you everything from the basics... it's better learning by yourself reading guides and manuals. Also google is a friend (a bastard one, but useful).

Have fun! ;)

haha. yeah, google is the kind of friend that stabs you in the back.

I have read through ubuntu manuals. I have refereed to this selection <https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Mount/USB> to mount during a session, but upon reboot I run into the same exact problem <unauthorized to mount>.  

As far as removing PolicyKit, I have not removed it. I am not in a position to make such modifications. I am trying to keep my OS as clean and simple as possible. Any of the basics that I need to know, I will learn along the way. The HDD mount issue is a problem for me. I need to be able to access every mount from every OS in order to work on my course projects. I am currently working in steganography, and as you know, working with music files and videos starts taking up a lot of space. Multiple HDDs and a backup external drive is needed.

Bl0ck, I will run anything you suggest to solve this. I haven't had this problem before on other distros- perhaps that is because I am an irresponsible linux user. I always run in root. But again, I am relatively new to linux so perhaps if you could spoon feed me this little bit of help I will be able to learn something from it and apply it in the future. Your help is appreciated, Bl0ck.

[schema]

Hi,

From provided information we can assist you a lot. First you need to check you BackBox ISO MD5 hash. Next from what kind of media you run BBox installation (USB,CD,SD ..) ? Did you formated your hard and do you have multi boot system etc ...If you see that this will take a lot of your time, you can run BBox in VirtualBox or vmware player without problem, if not USB live etc ..

Cheers !

Hey Zerof. I installed a BB ISO from a USB. I am dual booting 3 other operating systems, all on partitions. The BB partition is appropriately formatted. I was running BB originally on a VM  in BackTrack which ultimately lead to the installation- I decided that I wanted BB as my primary OS as opposed to just live sessions.

[b4d_bl0ck]

As far as removing PolicyKit, I have not removed it. I am not in a position to make such modifications.

What do you mean with you are not in position to do that? Running as root you are in position for everything ;D

Anyways i ask you to double check in Settings -> Settings Manager -> Session and Startup -> Application Autostart if PoliciyKit Authentication Agent is enabled. The fact that you are unable to mount, shut down, reboot etc. usually happens with PolicyKit disabled, so first thing to check is that.
Also try to mount from command line and post the output you get.
Then please, don't run as r00t, really pleease  ;D

Then i guess you searched the web... there are lots of threads on various forums, most users experienced this in XFCE. It coul be something related to Thunar file manager and/or login manager (default is lightdm in BB). But these seem old issues.
If you cannot solve, wait if other users have the same issue here, because if everyone running BBox has the same problem we can report to developers.
Otherwise if you are the only experiencing this, it could be a problem of yours.
Personally i have no problems to shut down and reboot in virtualbox, and i'm currently up to date with packages.

Waiting for updates...
Good luck and have fun!  ;)

[ostendali]

just run sudo -i and see if this allows you to elevate the privilege, If so, after doing that perform any of command (shutdown, reboot, etc.) and check what is happening. If everything is in the place you probably somehow kicked out your user from sudo......

check also the way b4d_bl0ck instructs you.

@b4d_bl0ck: when he says i am not in the position he mean he has limited knowledge to do such thing;-)

[schema]

sorry for the delay. I reinstalled on a partition- standard installation. policy kit is enabled. I ran through the steps here: <https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Mount/USB>
and everything worked fine, I was able to mount, log out and reboot, however once I powered down my machine and rebooted, I ran into the same problems.

I no longer get the login gui- i have to login from the cmd line. I cannot mount any device. the error output is "Unauthorized to mount", and I am no longer able to reboot or logout as i get the same error output: "not authorized".

[b4d_bl0ck]

Hey schema, ostendali,
sorry if i misunderstood, but since enabling/disabling PolicyKit is as easy as ticking/unticking a checkbox, maybe one can do it by mistake  :)
And for what i understood, you can su to root, am i wrong?

At this point anyways, I don't know what a sysadmin would do, but can you do as non-root user:

Code Select Expand

(chkconfig -l && id) | pastebinit
chkconfig should be already installed, otherwise install it with apt-get and repeat the command above.
You'll get a link to the paste in your terminal. Post it here.
Also could be useful if you can spot something interesting in your log files.

I no longer get the login gui

Mhhhh... as i wrote before, reading around, someone experienced these problems with login manager. Maybe you can try to install another one to see if it works.

Just my2c...
Good luck!

[ostendali]

sorry for the delay. I reinstalled on a partition- standard installation. policy kit is enabled. I ran through the steps here: <https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Mount/USB>
and everything worked fine, I was able to mount, log out and reboot, however once I powered down my machine and rebooted, I ran into the same problems.

I no longer get the login gui- i have to login from the cmd line. I cannot mount any device. the error output is "Unauthorized to mount", and I am no longer able to reboot or logout as i get the same error output: "not authorized".

I think you did a big mess....
there are several way of mounting an external drive and if you have no knowledge you can really mess up your system.

You are telling us the story only with your words, so pls one more time, provide the performed action (copy/paste) with the output so we can understand what exactly you did.

Also pls be aware is that we have disclaimer of this forum that requires the user to have an average knowledge on system to ask support in our forum. The official team doesn't really have time to invest in basic actions, because this is not about Backbox but linux basic knowledge. but if some other users can help you we don't mind that.

[weVeg]

Hi all you good guys!
What do you think if we check schema's logs, just to know what happens?? May be dmesg and kern.log can help us!

[ostendali]

Hi all you good guys!
What do you think if we check schema's logs, just to know what happens?? May be dmesg and kern.log can help us!

that is what I've asked for...... ;)

[weVeg]

Hi all you good guys!
What do you think if we check schema's logs, just to know what happens?? May be dmesg and kern.log can help us!

that is what I've asked for...... ;)

Yes bro, it should be the first step!
bye bye! =)