Re: [gentoo-user] Policykit problems (blueman, nm-applet, USB mount, etc) after some update

[Mick]

On Friday, 26 October 2018 12:14:17 BST Alexey Eschenko wrote:
> Hi.
>
> Some time ago (probably between two weeks and month) after another
> system update I started encountering problems with some userland
> services like blueman and nm-applet.
>
> I have encountered blueman problem every time when I logged in to my
> XFCE session. Right after XFCE init I did see this:
> https://github.com/blueman-project/blueman/issues/913
>
> Probably at the same time I became unable to enable my VPN connections
> using nm-applet. After choosing my connection from dropdown menu I've
>
> seen the error in notification bubble:
> > The VPN connection "..." failed to start.
> > Not authorized to control networking
>
> Third but not as likely related (not sure if it started to happen at the
> same time) is XFCE shutdown/reboot problems. For some time I'm unable to
> directly shutdown or reboot my PC from XFCE "Action Buttons" panel
> plugin. If I choose "Restart" or "Shut Down" then XFCE just logs out
> from my session and I will see SDDM. If I choose shutdown/reboot in SDDM
> then all will be ok but direct shutdown from XFCE only logs me out.
>
> And fourth problem is that for some time I became unable to mount USB
> flash drives from the file manager. In Thunar when I'm clicking on USB
> drive nothing happens (even nothing in the thunar console output if I
> run it from there). There is also nothing strange in journalctl when I'm
> plugging my USB flash drive.
> If I try to mount my USB drive using "sudo mount /dev/sdX1
> /media/usb_flash" then all works perfectly. udisksctl which I've never
> used in the past (but was told to try after mentioning this problem)
> mounts USB drive correctly but only after asking root password.
>
> After reading the issue in the blueman repository I tried "fix" which
> was mentioned here:
> https://github.com/blueman-project/blueman/issues/912#issuecomment-427648539
> https://github.com/blueman-project/blueman/wiki/PolicyKit
>
> It did help with blueman error on XFCE start.
> I'm not familiar with policykit at all but it looks like there was some
> systematic changes in permission policies and I think that there must be
> more correct and more generic solution than manually creating policykit
> policies for every service which I notice problems with.

I've experienced similar problems lately on a system where I had erroneously 
left settings to cater for startx, but these were in addition to what the 
Display Manager was doing (sddm).  As a result there were two sessions 
starting as shown by ck-list-sessions and this created a clash blocking things 
like BT, USB mounts from userspace (on any DE) and the like.

You may want to check if you have left any manually created session files in /
etc/X11/Sessions/ and ~/.xinit or ~/.xsession.

-- 
Regards,
Mick