"Operation Not Authorized" when mounting ntfs partitions

[dhinds]

The electricity went off momentarily with no battery back-up and on rebooting I found that I was unable to mount my three ntfs partitions, including my data partition.  "Operation Not Authorized" is the error message.   (From other OS's there's no problem)

udev and udisks2 are both installed as are ntfs-3g and ntfsprogs.

This is on an updated Sparky Multimedia Edition, 64 bits.

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

[seppalta]

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sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/windows,
where /dev/sda1 and /media/window are appropriately edited to your situation.

[dhinds]

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sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/windows,
where /dev/sda1 and /media/window are appropriately edited to your situation.

Thanks, seppalta.  I understand the partition part but am not sure about the media/ reference. Are you refering to the user account name?

And if that is the case, there are three ntfs partitions:  Will they be included automatically, or does each of them have to specified?

Another option would be to back up each one and convert them to another partition type.

TIA

[seppalta]

  I understand the partition part but am not sure about the media/ reference. Are you refering to the user account name?

And if that is the case, there are three ntfs partitions:  Will they be included automatically, or does each of them have to specified?

/media is a computer directory in which external partitions are usually listed.  Nothing sacred about the name (windows).  Replace it with anything you like.  Do  the command for each partition, giving each partition a unique name.

[dhinds]

On booting into Sparky, I tried to mount the Apps, Data and Distros partitions (all ntfs) with pcmanfm and got the same result: "Operation not Authorized"

Then I opened gparted to make sure I used the correct partition numbers and names.

Then I opened a terminal as root and typed:

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# mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda5 /media/Apps

and got

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ntfs-3g-mount: failed to access mountpoint /media/Apps: No such file or directory


The same thing happened with Data (sda6)

I reinstalled ntfs-3g with synaptic but ntfsprogs wasn't found in the repositories.

I then closed synaptic typed:

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# apt-get install ntfsprogs

and got:

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Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package ntfsprogs is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'ntfsprogs' has no installation candidate


I then reopened synaptic and refreshed it.

But I got:

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Failed to fetch http://www.deb-multimedia.org/dists/testing/main/binary-amd64/Packages.xz  Writing more data than expected (137696 > 137692)
Hashes of expected file:
- Filesize:137692 [weak]
- SHA256:58afe381bffd79d10a0a324e9cf721368530d0560510106878a4bae581b2cb33
- SHA1:cc0b47f24b716ac16be114887ff29afd8f4ea04e [weak]
- MD5Sum:453b53261717eca9443c9f86ec692933 [weak]
Release file created at: Thu, 19 Jan 2017 07:31:46 +0000
Failed to fetch http://www.deb-multimedia.org/dists/testing/main/binary-i386/Packages.xz  Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

I am going to have to either use another OS or back up my ntfs partitions and convert them to another file format.

Thanks for the tip but the problem persists (although not on Fedora, openSUSE or Calculate (which has another problem at present).

[paxmark1]

About the inability to install ntfsprogs

man ntfsprogs

The ntfsprogs are part of the ntfs-3g package which can be downloaded from

It is a subset of ntfs-3g 

I double checked to see if Debian had made a drastic change via the DFSG (Debian Free Software Guidelines) for bug 808463 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=808463  .  No, they have not. 

Just a wild idea.  Maybe try ntfsinfo on the partition, possibly via a live iso.  And possibly (after backing up) read up on ntfsfix and try that. 

Luck of the draw that Sparky was in use at the time of the power disconnect.  It might have had the same effect to the other systems if they were in use.

[dhinds]

About the inability to install ntfsprogs

man ntfsprogs

The ntfsprogs are part of the ntfs-3g package which can be downloaded from

It is a subset of ntfs-3g 

I double checked to see if Debian had made a drastic change via the DFSG (Debian Free Software Guidelines) for bug 808463 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=808463  .  No, they have not. 

Just a wild idea.  Maybe try ntfsinfo on the partition, possibly via a live iso.  And possibly (after backing up) read up on ntfsfix and try that. 

Luck of the draw that Sparky was in use at the time of the power disconnect.  It might have had the same effect to the other systems if they were in use.

Sparky has been my main system on this computer since it built in 2010 (or a maybe little after). And it's not the first time it broke (which hasn't been often, and all of them break at some point, for one reason or another - particularly if they are cutting edge, like Sparky and Calculate).

It so happens that I had done a sparkybackup-sys in December to install it on another computer and so I just used the dvd to boot a live session and there is no problem with accessing the ntfs partitions.

It's not exactly the same as my original (the xfce4-panels I had added are incomplete) but I have noticed nothing else so far so I might just go ahead and install it over the root and home partitions, if I can figure out how.

The trick will be to keep the same thing from happening again when I upgrade Sparky.  (Maybe I'll wait a while before doing that).

I am reinstalling my original Sparky installation from a sparkybackup-sys snapshot created late last month, without formatting the /home partition. If that doesn't work I do it again and format both / and /home.

Is pavroo ill?

[dhinds]

I had to install twice (reformatting the /home partition the second time) but the re-installation served it's purpose.

Thanks for the suggestions.  (Luckily, I had a recent sparkybackup-sys image on hand).

[pavroo]

What about polkit, does it work?
Show:

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pidof lxpolkit
and

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pidof polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1
The first one is default for LXDE, the second one is used in all tiny window managers of Sparky.
If the output is empty, run it manually:

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lxpolkit &
or

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polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1 &
and try to mount the drive after.