GNOME desktop confused by RAID-1 volume

[Michael Schwendt]

Recently, I've noticed that after logging in, a RAID-1 volume is
displayed two times. The same two hdd icons, the same Name, the same
"Properties" are displayed.

When I choose "Unmount Volume" via the context menu, the second icon
stays on the desktop. All its details in the properties dialog change
to "Volume: home", and indeed the details for my /home partition are
displayed. The "Name" is wrong though, as it's still the size of the
RAID-1 volume. When I want to unmount the volume (just as a test) I'm
asked "Do you want to empty the trash before you umount?" and the
dialog explains what that would yield. If I choose not to empty the
trash and proceed, there is an error dialog "Cannot unmount volume -
The volume is not mounted" (sure, it's /home). When I mount the RAID-1
volume again, both desktop icons refer to it again.

Some desktop component gets confused.

[Chuck Ebbert]

On 10/06/2007 04:24 AM, Michael Schwendt wrote:
>  Recently, I've noticed that after logging in, a RAID-1 volume is
>  displayed two times. The same two hdd icons, the same Name, the same
>  "Properties" are displayed.
>  
>  When I choose "Unmount Volume" via the context menu, the second icon
>  stays on the desktop. All its details in the properties dialog change
>  to "Volume: home", and indeed the details for my /home partition are
>  displayed. The "Name" is wrong though, as it's still the size of the
>  RAID-1 volume. When I want to unmount the volume (just as a test) I'm
>  asked "Do you want to empty the trash before you umount?" and the
>  dialog explains what that would yield. If I choose not to empty the
>  trash and proceed, there is an error dialog "Cannot unmount volume -
>  The volume is not mounted" (sure, it's /home). When I mount the RAID-1
>  volume again, both desktop icons refer to it again.
>   
Was there anything on the second drive before it was put into the
RAID1 array? If it was labeled /home before, somehow the system still
sees the old label (maybe because the process of creating a RAID array
doesn't properly clear non-raid metadata at the beginning of the drive.)

haldaemon is mad (was: Re: GNOME desktop confused by RAID-1 volume)

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sat, 6 Oct 2007 10:24:14 +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote:

>  Recently, I've noticed that after logging in, a RAID-1 volume is
>  displayed two times. The same two hdd icons, the same Name, the same
>  "Properties" are displayed.
>  
>  When I choose "Unmount Volume" via the context menu, the second icon
>  stays on the desktop. All its details in the properties dialog change
>  to "Volume: home", and indeed the details for my /home partition are
>  displayed. The "Name" is wrong though, as it's still the size of the
>  RAID-1 volume. When I want to unmount the volume (just as a test) I'm
>  asked "Do you want to empty the trash before you umount?" and the
>  dialog explains what that would yield. If I choose not to empty the
>  trash and proceed, there is an error dialog "Cannot unmount volume -
>  The volume is not mounted" (sure, it's /home). When I mount the RAID-1
>  volume again, both desktop icons refer to it again.
>  
>  Some desktop component gets confused. 
Additionally, hald now insists on mounting every available partition
whenever I log in via gdm. Some of the partitions it mounts twice,
creating orphaned desktop icons. I have yet to take some time and find out
why it does that and where it saves information about it. It even survives
a reboot and also happens when logging into an empty home directory. That
makes me think it saves some related data outside of $HOME. I cannot
reproduce it with fresh user accounts. It does that only for the user id,
which was active while I deleted a partition.

haldaemon is mad (was: Re: GNOME desktop confused by RAID-1 volume)

[Michael Schwendt]

On Wed, 5 Dec 2007 13:46:50 +0100, Michael Schwendt wrote:

>  On Sat, 6 Oct 2007 10:24:14 +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote:
>  
>  > Recently, I've noticed that after logging in, a RAID-1 volume is
>  > displayed two times. The same two hdd icons, the same Name, the same
>  > "Properties" are displayed.
>  > 
>  > When I choose "Unmount Volume" via the context menu, the second icon
>  > stays on the desktop. All its details in the properties dialog change
>  > to "Volume: home", and indeed the details for my /home partition are
>  > displayed. The "Name" is wrong though, as it's still the size of the
>  > RAID-1 volume. When I want to unmount the volume (just as a test) I'm
>  > asked "Do you want to empty the trash before you umount?" and the
>  > dialog explains what that would yield. If I choose not to empty the
>  > trash and proceed, there is an error dialog "Cannot unmount volume -
>  > The volume is not mounted" (sure, it's /home). When I mount the RAID-1
>  > volume again, both desktop icons refer to it again.
>  > 
>  > Some desktop component gets confused. 
That one isn't solved yet. But:
 
>  Additionally, hald now insists on mounting every available partition
>  whenever I log in via gdm. Some of the partitions it mounts twice,
>  creating orphaned desktop icons. I have yet to take some time and find out
>  why it does that and where it saves information about it. It even survives
>  a reboot and also happens when logging into an empty home directory. That
>  makes me think it saves some related data outside of $HOME. I cannot
>  reproduce it with fresh user accounts. It does that only for the user id,
>  which was active while I deleted a partition. 
This one is solved. PolicyKit was the culprit, giving my uid mysterious
permissions, so that gnome-volume-manager decided to treat all unmounted
partitions as removable media.

However, even if it's from only two days ago, I don't remember what had
led to the following in /var/log/secure:

Dec  3 16:43:53 opc4 polkit-grant-helper[6380]: granted use of
action='org.freedesktop.hal.storage.mount-fixed' to uid 500 [auth='root']

Under which circumstances would that happen? How can I reproduce it? All
I did was "su -" and using parted/fdisk to alter the partitioning of
/dev/sda.

haldaemon is mad (was: Re: GNOME desktop confused by RAID-1 volume)

[Michal Jaegermann]

On Wed, Dec 05, 2007 at 04:20:47PM +0100, Michael Schwendt wrote:
>  On Wed, 5 Dec 2007 13:46:50 +0100, Michael Schwendt wrote:
>   
>  > Additionally, hald now insists on mounting every available partition
>  > whenever I log in via gdm. 
You may put in /etc/PolicyKit/PolicyKit.conf a policy something
of that kind:

    <match action="org.freedesktop.hal.storage.mount-fixed">
      <match user=".*">
        <return result="no"/>
      </match>
    </match>

and this will prevent that.  You may want to be a more finegrained
than this.  In any case it looks to me that defaults are backwards.

The other option, at least for now, is to keep your disk filesystems
on LVM volumes. :-)

>  This one is solved. 
Well, no, not really AFAICT.  See
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=251062
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=400351
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=408061
and closed as NOTABUG https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=401811
Quite possibly there is more surprises in store.

All of the above affect F8.

    Michal

haldaemon is mad (was: Re: GNOME desktop confused by RAID-1 volume)

[Michael Schwendt]

On Wed, 5 Dec 2007 10:51:38 -0700, Michal Jaegermann wrote:

>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=251062
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=400351
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=408061
>  and closed as NOTABUG https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=401811
>  Quite possibly there is more surprises in store.
>  
>  All of the above affect F8. 
A graphical PolicyKit dialog that asks for the root password?
Interesting. I didn't run X as root either.

What I remember is that I opened xterm for "su -" and then used
"parted"
to change the partition table on /dev/sda. I started with deleting
partitions 6 and 7 so I could merge them into one. After a reboot, I used
fdisk to fix the partition numbering. At either one of those steps, some
component (possibly gnome-volume-manager) went wild and mounted the
renumbered partitions on /media/* and created desktop icons.

Could it be that while I was root something passed on the permissions
without asking for the password?