Gparted interacts with Thunar

I was sitting there in MX, waiting for gparted to format a flash drive. I decided to go and look for the files I wanted to copy to the flash drive. So, start up Thunar… panic… there are no partitions listed under Devices, only the root filesystem.
Where have all my disk partitions gone? I thought maybe I had messed up gparted and erased everything, so check and no , it is only formatting the flash drive.
I thought I may have changed some Thunar setting, so check, and there is no setting that tells it to ignore devices.
So, it finally dawns on me, gparted is somehow locking all the filesystems except root, while it is running. It is not just unmounting them, Thunar displays unmounted filesystems, it is locking them in some way that prevents Thunar from seeing them.
So final check. Gparted is finished. I close it. Then open Thunar, and magically all my 20 or so filesystems are back and available to mount or whatever.

It sort of makes sense. When gparted is operating, you dont want users changing things on filesystems. But I am unable to explain how gparted does this? It is like it put the computer into single user mode?
And I am unsure whether this is an MX special, or whether all distros do the same?
Can anyone clarify?

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Yes it is a security feature of Gparted. Gparted always works with unmounted drives best. No matter what file manager Thunar, Nemo, Caja, Dolphin, etc. It’s the same when installing an OS, the installer unmounts the main drive and any others.

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@nevj :

Hi Neville, :wave:

on my Linux Lite 6.2. it´s like this: when I let gparted run the desktop icons of the drives vanish as well.
As soon as I shut down gparted they´re visible again.
I never looked at thunar during the gparted process, I have to admit. I´ll do that next time. :wink:

I strongly suspect it´s the same principle behind it.

Many greetings from Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

OK 2 things

  • its not just in MX
  • its not just Thunar, desktop icons vanish too

There must be some system-wide way of hideing filesystems? Gparted cant do all that on its own.

Hmm… :thinking:
I wonder whether following the output of:

tail -f /var/log/syslog | batcat --paging=never -l log

while running (or rather starting) gparted would shed some light on the matter…?

Cheers from Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

I think it may help

I think
strace gparted
would show what system calls gparted was making.
Deciphering the output may be difficult

and,
what is it that Thunar and the Xfce icon maker listen to in order to decide whether to display a file? There may be something in /proc ?

@nevj :

I just did it. Here´s the output:

  • starting gparted:
 11   │ May 23 15:39:24 rosika-Lenovo-H520e systemd[1]: Reloading.
  12   │ May 23 15:39:24 rosika-Lenovo-H520e systemd[1]: /etc/systemd/system/rc-local.service:11: Support for option SysVStartPriority= has been removed and it is
       │  ignored
  13   │ May 23 15:39:24 rosika-Lenovo-H520e systemd[1]: /lib/systemd/system/clamav-freshclam.service:11: Standard output type syslog is obsolete, automatically u
       │ pdating to journal. Please update your unit file, and consider removing the setting altogether.
  14   │ May 23 15:39:24 rosika-Lenovo-H520e systemd[1]: Starting Message of the Day...
  15   │ May 23 15:39:24 rosika-Lenovo-H520e systemd[1]: Starting Update the plocate database...
  16   │ May 23 15:39:24 rosika-Lenovo-H520e systemd[1]: motd-news.service: Deactivated successfully.
  17   │ May 23 15:39:24 rosika-Lenovo-H520e systemd[1]: Finished Message of the Day.
  18   │ May 23 15:39:27 rosika-Lenovo-H520e kernel: [ 7582.782743]  sdb:
  19   │ May 23 15:39:27 rosika-Lenovo-H520e kernel: [ 7582.914125]  sdb:
  20   │ May 23 15:39:40 rosika-Lenovo-H520e kernel: [ 7595.734681] perf: interrupt took too long (4001 > 3997), lowering kernel.perf_event_max_sample_rate to 497
       │ 50
  21   │ May 23 15:39:56 rosika-Lenovo-H520e systemd[1]: plocate-updatedb.service: Deactivated successfully.
  22   │ May 23 15:39:56 rosika-Lenovo-H520e systemd[1]: Finished Update the plocate database.
  23   │ May 23 15:39:56 rosika-Lenovo-H520e systemd[1]: plocate-updatedb.service: Consumed 3.904s CPU time.
  • and now shutting it down
  24   │ May 23 15:40:35 rosika-Lenovo-H520e systemd[1]: Reloading.
  25   │ May 23 15:40:36 rosika-Lenovo-H520e systemd[1]: /etc/systemd/system/rc-local.service:11: Support for option SysVStartPriority= has been removed and it is
       │  ignored
  26   │ May 23 15:40:36 rosika-Lenovo-H520e systemd[1]: /lib/systemd/system/clamav-freshclam.service:11: Standard output type syslog is obsolete, automatically u
       │ pdating to journal. Please update your unit file, and consider removing the setting altogether.
  27   │ May 23 15:40:45 rosika-Lenovo-H520e PackageKit: get-updates transaction /1495_edaacddb from uid 1000 finished with success after 2293ms

Doesn´t seem to help much, does it?

BTW: I took a look at thunar while gparted was running.
Like with you the drives vanished and later (after shutting down gparted) reappeared.

@clatterfordslim provided a good explanation for that.

Many greetings
Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

It has always done that, with Desktop Icons as well. Anything it reads that can be partitioned it will lock down. Remember when you open Gparted it asks for your password, so you’re granting it root access privileges to read your entire system for drives that can be partitioned. When you install an OS mounted drives that show on the desktop disappear too. It has been that way since Adam was a lad. Whoever Adam is? :grin:

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The reason why they disappear is because of root access that has been given by the user. So it’s like opening your file system with root privileges, a secondary window pops up, the root window. When you grant Gparted access it opens a root window for itself to read your drives, but not obtainable as such for the user to see, Gparted takes the drives visibility away and opens them up inside the GUI of Gparted. I hope this makes sense?

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Hi Mark,
It makes very good sense. Gparted has special privileges, more even than root.
I agree, it is better to use gparted booted from a flash drive.
I would just like to understand the mechanism it uses to disable filesystem access. It is more than just unmounting filesystems… they are invisible to other programs.
Thanks
Neville

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