How can I mount a USB drive without sudo?

Question

I can only mount my USB stick with sudo mount /dev/sdb <path>. But my file manager can mount it without sudo because when I insert it into the USB port it's immediately available.
How do I mount a device from command line without sudo?

Answer 1

The mount command requires superuser privileges, but you could mimic the effect of running a command without sudo by allowing user to run the command without a password, then adding an alias that invokes the sudo for you. For example:

Add this in visudo, replacing $user with the username (you might want the umount command as well):

$user ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/mount, /usr/bin/umount

Add this to your shell rc, e.g. ~/.bashrc:

alias mount="sudo mount" alias umount="sudo umount"

Apply to the current shell session: . ~/bashrc

Edit: the shell aliases should be one per line (as it did appear in preview), not sure why they got strung together after posting.

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Another option is to use some utility like udisksctl which is already running as root to mount, e.g. udisksctl mount -b /dev/sdbN (mounting to /media/$user/*).

Comments

Turns out udisksctl is exactly what I needed. Looks like it's the same tool used by other desktops and file managers for auto mounting.

Answer 2

Using "pmount" you can.