@tkaiser, thanks
What surprised me is that this is a fresh install of the latest image. Plugged a usb stick and it wouldn't mount it unless I switch the nodm settings to root as the default user, which is kinda outrageous.
Yeah I thought about the polkit hell, it was common when using SLim as a display manager but it apparently has issues with the nodm as it doesn't have the X dot files scattered around.
Anyway, got the trusty desktop image on the NAND and now playing around with the non-gui Jessie image trying to decide what to do with the Cubietruck. Will follow back with any further findings.
Update 10/4/2016: the addition of .pkla files linked to the thread that tkaiser mentions, seem to fix the problem. Marking this as solved.