Unable to view or access drives with IFL, TBOSDT, or Partition Work as normal user in Linux

Problem:

While running Image for Linux (IFL), tbosdt, or Partition Work (partwork) as a normal user on a Linux distribution, one of the following error messages (or conditions) occurs when attempting to access a drive:

IFL:  "No usable HD found!"

tbosdt:  "Invalid drive"

Partition Work:  No drives or partitions appear in the program

Cause:

The user does not belong to the 'disk' group. A normal user must belong to the 'disk' group in order to access hard drives, USB flash drives, optical drives, etc. The members of the various groups in Linux are defined in the file /etc/group. This file requires root privileges to modify.

Solutions:

1. Run the program as root, or  with 'sudo' (i.e. sudo ./imagel, sudo ./tbosdt, sudo ./partwork) from a terminal window. Note that with IFL (GUI) and Partition Work, this may not work on some distributions, depending on the configuration.

2. Add user to the disk group from the command line. The details of how to do this vary by distribution. Even those that use the same command to do it can vary as far as the correct options to use. The following list covers some major distributions. Note that it will be necessary to run the command as root or with 'sudo'. Also note that it will be necessary to log out, and then log back in again (or reboot) for the change to take effect.

adduser  <user name>  disk 

Fedora, CentOS, Redhat

usermod  -a  -G  disk  <user name>

usermod  -a  -G  disk  <user name>

usermod  -A disk  <user name>  (use on older versions if above fails)

3. Add user to the disk group by editing /etc/group. The file /etc/group can also be edited manually with any text editor (as root or with 'sudo') to add the user to the end of the 'disk' line in that file. For example, to add the user 'johnd' to the 'disk' group:

Original line: disk:x:6:

Change the line to: disk:x:6:johnd

To then add user 'janed', change the line to: disk:x:6:johnd,janed

After editing the /etc/group file, it will be necessary to log out, and then log back in again (or reboot) for the change to take effect.

4. Add user to disk group using GUI configuration tool. On Gnome-based distributions that include a GUI configuration tool such as the "Users and Groups" applet (or "User and Group Management") it can be used to accomplish this task.