Bug 182641

Usermount will refuse to format if the device is not writable or is mounted and
doesn't distinguish device types such as an USB key drive. Please check your
permissions for /dev/sda1, what may cause your problem. Have you seen this
message running usermount as root?

It worked for me fine with my 128MB Seitec key drive.

[ Adding davidz to the CC list ]

Doesn't seem to work either as root or normal use.  The drive can be mounted but
not formatted.  Permissions are as follows:

[root@localhost ~]# ls -l /dev/sda1
brw-r----- 1 root disk 8, 1 Feb 27 10:00 /dev/sda1

> Please check your permissions for /dev/sda1, what may cause your problem.

We don't change the permissions of devices in the default install and we
shouldn't - it would violate security... I know we used to do this back in the
updfstab days but this changed in FC3.

Btw, A new set of GNOME formatting/partitions tools using HAL is planned.. will
also include support for formatting LUKS volumes.. and it won't require root or
special device permissions for e.g. USB keys.

This should make FC6 - especially if we devote some time to working on this :-)

Just to have more info, do you have SELinux enabled on your box?

Yup. Running Permissive.

userformat can't help it if it is called by nautilus on a device that isn't
writable.  At minimum, nautilus shouldn't offer the menu entry in that case.

Fedora apologizes that these issues have not been resolved yet. We're
sorry it's taken so long for your bug to be properly triaged and acted
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This bug is open for a Fedora version that is no longer maintained and
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