Disable repartitioning

polkit enables you to set permissions for individual operations. For udisks2, the utility for disk management services, the configuration is located at /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.udisks2.policy. This file contains a set of actions and default values, which can be overridden by system administrator.

The polkit configuration in /etc overrides that shipped by packages in /usr/share.

Disable repartitioning

  1. Create a file with the same content as in /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.udisks2.policy: cp /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.udisks2.policy /etc/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.udisks2.policy

    Do not change the /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.udisks2.policy file, your changes will be overwritten by the next package update.

  2. Delete any actions you do not need from within the policyconfig element and add the following lines to the /etc/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.udisks2.policy file:

      <action id="org.freedesktop.udisks2.modify-device">
     <description>Modify the drive settings</description>
     <message>Authentication is required to modify drive settings</message>
    <defaults>
      <allow_any>no</allow_any>
      <allow_inactive>no</allow_inactive>
      <allow_active>yes</allow_active>
    </defaults>
</action>

    Replace no by auth_admin if you want to ensure only the root user is able to carry out the action.

  3. Save the changes.

When the user tries to change the disk settings, the following message is shown: Authentication is required to modify drive settings.