Automount Drives without Authentication on Linux (UDisks2)

Some users struggle with getting external USB and even internal drives to auto-mount in Linux or to even mount them without you being asked for authentication, which, can be most annoying.

The fix is rather damn simple. First, make sure your user is a member of the wheel group. To see if you are, simply type the following on the command line.

groups

You will see

wheel yourusername

If you are not a member of wheel just do this

usermod -a -G wheel yourusername

Now you need to add a rule file to polkit to allow udisks2 to mount your drives for you. So again from the command line do the following.

sudo nano /etc/polkit-1/rules.d/10-udisks2.rules

Now paste this into this new file and then CTRL+X > Y to save and exit.

// See the polkit(8) man page for more information
 // about configuring polkit.
 // Allow udisks2 to mount devices without authentication
 // for users in the "wheel" group.
 polkit.addRule(function(action, subject) {
     if ((action.id == "org.freedesktop.udisks2.filesystem-mount-system" ||
          action.id == "org.freedesktop.udisks2.filesystem-mount") &&
         subject.isInGroup("wheel")) {
         return polkit.Result.YES;
     }
 });

Once done, simply reboot and watch the magic. Enjoy 😉