Disk Image mounter not working

[Eddy Colloton]

Hi everyone,

I have been using BitCurator for a few years, and I have always been able to mount raw disk images by double clicking on them in the file manager. Typically these would be guymager created disk images, sometimes ddrescue or from other sources. Regardless, I've had good luck with effortless mounting by either double clicking the disk image, or right clicking and selecting "open with disk image mounter."

I just moved to a new position at a different institution, and unfortunately, this method for disk image mounting is no longer working. When I double click on a disk image, or right-click and select "open with disk image mounter" nothing happens! (Using Mac Pro late 2013, running Mac OS X 10.11.6, BitCurator 2.0.6 VM with Virtual Box v5.2.16)

I've been able to mount those disk images by following the instructions on this digital forensics wiki page using kpartx, or on the MAC OSX (I have to change the file extension to .iso to get that to work).

Has anyone else had similar issues or have ideas on how to troubleshoot? It would be great to be able to mount without jumping through extra hoops.

Eddy

[Kam Woods]

The answer is moderately involved. The crux of it is: "Automount has always been disabled in BitCurator, but the behavior when clicking on disk images in Ubuntu has changed between 16.04 and 18.04. There is a way to enforce either behavior in 18.04 (BitCurator 2.0.6) but it involves a compromise." Read on for the full answer.

In the BitCurator 1.8.x (based on Ubuntu 16.04LTS) track, the default behavior for Ubuntu when you double-clicked on a disk image was to mount it - whether or not the "automount" behavior for the relevant GNOME component had been disabled (which it *was* in BitCurator). In the BitCurator 2.x.x (based on Ubuntu 18.04LTS, where Unity has been dropped and full GNOME is now used) track, the default behavior for Ubuntu when you double-click on a disk image is to mount it if you have automount enabled, and to do nothing if it is disabled (which it *is* in BitCurator). So what you're seeing is a change in the underlying behavior of Ubuntu. BitCurator prefers safety, so automount is always disabled to ensure physical devices are not mounted when plugged in; but in Ubuntu 18.04LTS this means double-clicking on a disk image will no longer mount it.

There are two ways to navigate this in normal operations in BitCurator 2.x.x: (1) You can use the right-click context menu and go to "Scripts->Disk Image Mount" to mount your disk image (similar to how this script worked in BitCurator 1.8.x). Or if this doesn't work for you for some reason, (2) you can re-enable automount by doing the following:

a. Click on the "Show Applications" grid in the bottom left of the screen.

b. Type "dconf" in the search bar, and start the dconf editor by clicking on it

c. Dismiss the "You might break everything be careful" dialog

d. Navigate to org->gnome->desktop->media-handling

e. Re-enable automount by clicking the appropriate slider

You can now double-click on disk images and see them automount. However, any physical device you plug in *will also be automounted*. As far as I am aware, there's no simple way to do one but not the other.

Kam

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[Eddy Colloton]

Thanks Kam! I had only tried the "Open with disk image mounter" option when right clicking on disk images, and I had not drilled down in to the "Scripts->Disk Image Mount/Unmount" options. This is working well for me, thank you!

Nice to know the background on how the Unity/GNOME change has impacted BitCurator, thanks for including that info.

Since I have been exploring other ways to mount disk images and partitions due to these changes, I am curious how other BitCurator users are mounting disk images or other devices. If anyone is using the techniques we've discussed, or others, please chime in! Curious to hear from you.

I've been using ewfmount with e01 disk images, and the "disk image mount/unmount" scripts are also working with the extracted raw. I would also love to hear if folks use alternate tools for mounting e01s (xmount?) and if there are specific advantages/disadvantages to either tool.

Best,

Eddy