all disks and partitions are automounted in the live session

Hm, I cannot reproduce this on the current live CD. I have two HD partitions there, and neither is mounted automatically. Just when I browse them in nautilus and click on them they get mounted (without an authorization dialog, since the ubuntu user is an admin and has no password).

Can you please submit the output of "mount" and "gvfs-mount -li" right after booting the live system? I get

    can_mount=1
    should_automount=0

for the internal hd partitions.

Too late, I have rebooted :) I will check tomorrow.

Ah with the freeze tomorrow, one last effort :)

So, let's first confirm that it is nautilus, and not something else. Please boot the live CD, unmount all the partitions, then log out and back in in gdm with the "xterm" session. Run "metacity &" to get a WM, and perhaps "gnome-terminal" to get a multi-tab terminal.

Run "gnome-mount -oi" in one terminal, and then first check in another if you get any automounts (then it'd be gvfs, but I don't quite believe that). Then start nautilus, and check again if that mounted your drives. After that, please copy&paste the "gnome-mount -oi" output (just in case; I figure it will just show that the partitions where mounted, but let's see).

Thanks!

Ah, I can reproduce this on my wife's computer, but not in kvm. How odd.

So it seems to happen if gvfs-gdu-volume-monitor starts up and triggers dk-disks to start.

I'm going to mark this RC, since this has the potential of damaging file systems (hibernated ones, changing fsck timestamps, etc.), and the live system isn't supposed to touch your existing system.

Ah, I figured out why it only happens sometimes. gdu monitor's update_volume() sets automount flag to TRUE in general. However, it is set to FALSE if the media detection time is older than the "new volume" detection by 5 seconds or more. Thus if dk-disks was already running, starting gvfs will usually set automount to FALSE since the difference will be more than 5 seconds. The rationale is:

      /* If a volume (partition) appear _much later_ than when media was insertion it
       * can only be because the media was repartitioned. We don't want to automount
       * such volumes.
       */

But if gvfs-gdu-volume-monitor triggers dk-disks startup, the "last media detection" time will be almost equal to "new volume", and automount will be TRUE.

I think we should generally disable automounting for system internal drives.

This bug was fixed in the package gvfs - 1.4.0-0ubuntu6

---------------
gvfs (1.4.0-0ubuntu6) karmic; urgency=low

  * Add 04_dont_automount_internal_partitions.patch: Disable automounting for
    internal partitions. This avoids automounting them on the live system.
    This does not change behaviour in installed system, since internal
    partitions require polkit authorization, and those do not get automounted.
    (LP: #451613)

 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:54:30 +0200

On 12.10, the live session also mounts all my harddisk partitions. (disk icons show up on the unity left panel) As the ext4 partitions are still mounted in a hibernated session, the mounting caused file system error after resuming and failed to boot. (recover mode fails too) I would suggest that this kind of behavior in live session should be done in read only mode if it's really needed. Same for hibernated windows partitions.