On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 4:43 PM, walt <w41...@gmail.com> wrote: > Recent threads about consolekit vs logind(systemd) have made me curious, so > I've been studying... > > A few of us have had recent problems with things like plugging USB sticks, > which once worked transparently but now require root privileges. > > I've discovered that my own such problems are caused by this: > > $loginctl show-session 1 (I have only one session, cleverly named '1') > > Id=1 > Timestamp=Sun 2014-02-09 07:18:32 PST > TimestampMonotonic=389744251 > VTNr=1 > TTY=/dev/tty1 > Remote=no > Service=login > Scope=session-1.scope > Leader=426 > Audit=1 > Type=tty > Class=user > Active=no <========================= should be 'yes' > State=online <======================= should be 'active' > > Users of consolekit, don't feel neglected. You should try this instead: > > $ck-list-sessions > Session1: > unix-user = '1001' > realname = '(null)' > seat = 'Seat2' > session-type = '' > active = FALSE (correct because I'm ssh'd into a remote box) > x11-display = ':0' > x11-display-device = '/dev/tty2' > display-device = '/dev/tty1' > remote-host-name = '' > is-local = FALSE > on-since = '2014-02-09T22:00:10.750312Z' > login-session-id = '1' > > Canek explained that the reason my session is not 'active' is that I'm > not using a Display Manager (gdm kdm lightdm), which talks to logind or > consolekit and vouches for my physical presence at the local keyboard. > > However, when I do the same thing on arch linux (as a virtualbox guest) > I see that my session (running gnome) is 'active' and I have no trouble > powering off the virtual machine as an unprivileged user.
Hi Walt; since I already have GNOME 3+systemd, I decided to install Xfce. Given that all the plumbing is essentially the same for both desktops, it took less than 15 minutes for portage to emerge it (13 small packages). I started it like you, with "exec startxcfe4" in my $HOME/.xinitrc. Boy, I had forgotten how desktops looked at the start of the century. Anyway, I had exactly the same problem as you; I needed my root password to mount USB sticks or shutdown the machine. My session was Active=no, State=online. As I suspected, if I started Xfce through gdm, everything worked without any issue; session was Active=yes, State=active, and my root password was not required for anything. So one workaround is to install gdm, but that is ugly (and unnecessary, see below). > Any ideas how I can fix it? Yeah, I found the solution on the net: http://blog.falconindy.com/articles/back-to-basics-with-x-and-systemd.html Basically, invoke startx passing Xorg the option of which VT you want to "transfer" for your X11 session: startx -- vt01 Obviously, that only works if you are in VT 1 (Alt-F1). > BTW, this helped me to understand some of the buzzwords I used above: > > http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/multiseat/ I owe you an apology Walter; I just assumed you had configured something wrong. I'm just getting used to the fact that with GNOME 3+systemd everything kinda works immediately. Sorry. With the above solution, everything works with Xfce without asking for authentication... except adding printers, I suppose. Regards. PS: Inside Xfce (which looks surprisingly similar to GNOME 2), I kept doing the same thing I do on a Mac or Windows machine; pressing the windows key to bring up the shell overview. I really don't understand how could I get any work done before using GNOME Shell. -- Canek Peláez Valdés Posgrado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
