Suddenly not authorized to mount anything.

[luiznetto]

Yes, I do have one: multimedia.list

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deb https://www.deb-multimedia.org buster main non-free

It looks like I will have to reinstall anyway (the life of a Linux user is hard!)

[Chrisdb]

Yes, I do have one: multimedia.list

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deb https://www.deb-multimedia.org buster main non-free

It looks like I will have to reinstall anyway (the life of a Linux user is hard!)

Just remove the file and run apt update again

[luiznetto]

I did that.

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luiz@debian:/etc/apt/sources.list.d$ su
Password: 
root@debian:/etc/apt/sources.list.d# ls
multimedia.list
root@debian:/etc/apt/sources.list.d# rm multimedia.list
root@debian:/etc/apt/sources.list.d# ls
root@debian:/etc/apt/sources.list.d# apt-get update
Hit:1 http://security.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates InRelease
Hit:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian buster InRelease
Hit:3 http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-updates InRelease
Reading package lists... Done

Do I really have to reinstall the whole system? Other than that pesky message

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

everything else seems to be working fine (except for the fan problem that I haven't so far been able to solve), and I can work around this by mounting the volumes manually.

What do you think?

[Chrisdb]

That's of course up to you. If you can live with this issue, you do not need to reinstall your system.

One last thing you can try:
Create the following file:
/etc/polkit-1/rules.d/00-mount-internal.rules

With the following content:

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polkit.addRule(function(action, subject) {
   if ((action.id == "org.freedesktop.udisks2.filesystem-mount-system" &&
      subject.local && subject.active && subject.isInGroup("storage")))
      {
         return polkit.Result.YES;
      }
});

**EDIT
Forgot to mention:
And add your user to storage group:

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usermod -aG storage <username>

[luiznetto]

I created the file that you mentioned, but look:

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root@debian:/etc/polkit-1/rules.d# /sbin/usermod -aG storage luiz
usermod: group 'storage' does not exist

Maybe "mount" is the real name of the group?

[Head_on_a_Stick]

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usermod: group 'storage' does not exist

It is possible to create new groups with groupadd(8) but it might be better to change the configuration file to use the extant plugdev group instead.

[Chrisdb]

but it might be better to change the configuration file to use the extant plugdev group instead.

Indeed this would be better

@luiznetto,
Do not forget to alter the content of file '/etc/polkit-1/rules.d/00-mount-internal.rules' to resemble your group:

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...
subject.local && subject.active && subject.isInGroup("plugdev")))
...

[luiznetto]

Thank you guys, you've been excellent! I've tested it for two days, apparently it works. I think we can mark this thread as solved.

[sunrat]

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usermod: group 'storage' does not exist

It is possible to create new groups with groupadd(8) but it might be better to change the configuration file to use the extant plugdev group instead.

plugdev is supposed to be for removable devices. From https://wiki.debian.org/SystemGroups :

plugdev: Allows members to mount (only with the options nodev and nosuid, for security reasons) and umount removable devices through pmount.

But I guess if it works...

Personally I have created "storage" group and added my user to it. Polkit rule works fine and I can mount local drives without extra authorization.