/start rant

A short vent of evil Udisks default policy of having to enter a password to mount a partition when in a GUI file manager. I boot the desktop up and if I open thunar, I should be able to open my music partition without getting prompted for a freakin root password. In the past I have simply edited /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.udisks.policy and under internal drive changed it to yes active to avoid the annoying situation. So I get the latest updates and discover we now have org.freedesktop.udisks2.policy which is now the new default file and just as annoying. I could simply edit that file, but be stuck with each time an update comes along it gets rewritten to default. Zomg super annoying! As a desktop user I should have access to my partitions without having to jump through hoops. So I browsed around and on the archwiki found a simple solution, Override that evil thing!

So I did:
groupadd storage
gpasswd -a wolfden storage

nano /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/10-storage-group-mount-override.pkla
and put in that file
[storage group mount override]
Identity=unix-group:storage
Action=org.freedesktop.udisks2.filesystem-mount-system
ResultAny=yes
ResultInactive=yes
ResultActive=yes

Restart and no more freakin password prompt to access my media files, sanity returns back to the desktop user. Sometimes trying to figure out the direction of linux is frustrating. Desktop environments are moving in a direction of making it so simple to use that a toddler can run it, but than you got something like udisks making it annoying with it’s default policies. I could understand the default policy of udisks if on a server machine, but not for a desktop user.

/end rant

A little matter I would like to bring to your attention is our wiki page for Virtualbox can produce a small surprise.  The scenario is that you download Sabayon 8 version, install it and than decide to install Virtualbox and Virtualbox pulls a lot of stuff including a new kernel of 3.3.  Sabayon 8 iso comes with kernel 3.2 so when you go and install Virtualbox you are indirectly invoking a kernel upgrade.  So the question is how to install Virtualbox.

Well, here is what I would do.  We keep our packages updated so we might as well upgrade the kernel also, but instead I would do it in a bit of different order of just doing equo install virtualbox-bin, I’d start with kernel-switcher.

We can use equo search linux-sabayon to see what the latest kernel is.  And in my case it shows sys-kernel/linux-sabayon-3.3-r2 is the latest kernel.  To see what your current kernel version is, simply run uname -r.

So now we can upgrade the kernel with:

kernel-switcher switch sys-kernel/linux-sabayon-3.3-r2

This will than upgrade the kernel and all the needed modules and add the entry to your grub.  Now at this point and time I would reboot and boot into the new kernel.  Once rebooted I would than:

equo install virtualbox-bin

The modules should pull, but if not:

equo install virtualbox-modules#`uname -r`

Continue On

depmod -a

modprobe vboxdrv

modprobe vboxnetadp

modprobe vboxnetflt

usermod -a -G vboxusers YOUR_USER_NAME

Now go ahead and log out and than log back in so the changes can be applied.

To get virtualbox modules to load automatically:

    # nano /etc/conf.d/modules

add to it:

    modules="vboxdrv vboxnetflt vboxnetadp"

then save and exit, reboot.

Once you have Virtualbox installed you won’t have to worry about pulling kernels, it’s just that initial install and if there is a new kernel available scenario.  If one had downloaded and install Sabayon 8 and installed Virtualbox before kernel 3.3 came out, one would never of had to fuss with a different kernel.

The only thing we are really doing that the wiki doesn’t cover is switching the kernel first.  Why do I recommend using kernel-switcher vs just installing it all with equo install virtualbox-bin?  The main thing is, you’re changing kernels so I want to keep that process simple and smooth vs pulling it and doing a bunch of updates along side it.  In theory both methods should work, I just want to take the extra step and make sure it goes right.