Use policykit

for some operations that need priviledges (like mounting, partitioning and formatting the stick) we'd ideally have policykit support.

for operations like reading an isofile, bsdtar or libarchive can be used.

Please also consider this[1]. It's just a 0.0.1 version, but I think could be a good idea have a cross-distro/cross-desktop framework for admin tasks. It's based on PolicyKit, so you don't have to write custom code for every application (update-manager, jockey...)

Also please note that currently users have the ability to use mass storage devices and CD-ROM devices (see Adim->Users >> Properties >> Privileges tab), so I think you can "jail" the privilege escalation just to partitioning and formatting.

[1] http://blogs.gnome.org/rodrigo/2008/10/22/adminkit-001/

When this is fixed, can you please also have a look at bug 309480 which appears to be a result of this bug. Thank you.

This will be much easier once Ubuntu starts to use DeviceKit, as DK-Disks has methods for partitioning, formatting volumes and setting labels etc. All that would be needed would be the Policykit support.

This bug was fixed in the package usb-creator - 0.2.7

---------------
usb-creator (0.2.7) karmic; urgency=low

  [ Evan Dandrea ]
  * Add PolicyKit support (LP: #273483).
  * Move logging back to the home directory, now that usb-creator is run as a
    regular user (LP: #431266).
  * Use GIO instead of gnomevfs. Only lookup GNOME device names and
    icons as needed.
  * Remove the device in the DeviceKit-disks backend when it's removed
    from the system.
  * Only set the non-size columns to expand to fill available space in the GTK+
    frontend. Set a minimum width of 75px for all columns.
  * Add the missing retry dialog to the GTK+ frontend.
  * Fix a deadlock when the failed dialog runs.
  * Explicitly depend on mtools, just in case someone removes it and
    expects usb-creator to still work (LP: #295212).
  * Re-enable the format button now that Devicekit-disks 007 has been
    released.
  * Depend on DeviceKit-disks >= 007.
  * Freeze exception (LP: #432542).
  * Update translations from Launchpad.

  [ Roderick B. Greening ]
  * Bump version in setup.py, kde_about.py, usb-creator-gtk, and man to 0.2.7
  * Remove completed TODO items
  * Update some message strings for translations
  * Add the missing retry dialog to the KDE frontend.
  * Update man pages to reflect new log file location
  * In devicekit backend, ensure mount is empty string '' rather than empty
    dbus.Array to prevent crashes in os.statvfs from misc.py

 -- Evan Dandrea <email address hidden> Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:02:28 -0700