rolfie

A thorough search today revealed where I did hide a backup copy and a hint from where I got the tip: I found somebody using LightDM/Mate on askubuntu.com who wanted to disable these functions for all users. That article gave me the handle to do the opposite.

You add this file to /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/enable-shutdown-reboot.pkla

[Enable lightdm shutdown/reboot]
Identity=unix-user:*
Action=org.freedesktop.login1.reboot;org.freedesktop.login1.reboot-multiple-sessions;org.freedesktop.login1.power-off;org.freedesktop.login1.power-off-multiple-sessions;
ResultAny=yes
ResultInactive=yes
ResultActive=yes

I deliberately did not enable Hibernate and Standby, I never use this.

Hope this helps also other readers.

Thanks, Rolfie

Anyhow, switched to elongind, and 75% of the problems seem to be gone by now: everything from Mate seems to work.

Open issue: the Shutdown, Reboot etc. options in the LightDM panel are greyed out. Hints what needs to be done?

Thanks, Rolfie

Maybe for dependency reasons ?
For practical reasons ? To make polkit work ?

Please bring me light :-)
Kind regards.

For me it was simply a matter of installing two packages (libpolkit-backend-1-0-elogind and libpolkit-gobject-1-0-elogind) and all problems immediately went away. I didn't need to do any configuration, it was truly just a matter of having the right packages. It was only after a few days of everything working that I got brave and uninstalled all the consolekit-related packages, and things simply continued humming along.

If you don't have a strong reason to stick with consolekit, why don't you try your luck with elogind?

Still I am stuck, though I learned something.

• Did a fresh install of ASCII, just base system, no desktop, from DVD, root and home on separate devices and both encrypted.

• Edited the sources.list to work from the internet. Update/upgrade.

• Made the auto-decrypt work.

• Installed xorg, lightdm and mate-extra. Added synaptic.

• Reboot: all works as expected, got consolekit installed.

• Started to add packages with apt install in blocks to build my usual working enviroment. After each block checked the installed policykit-files with dpkg -l, only got consoleklit stuff back.

• When finished, rebooted => issues back again. No change in the policykit-files installed, still on consolekit.

In the moment I am stuck. No idea what may cause the issues. Suspect tools like gnome-system-tools.

Probably need more time to figure out what causes the problems.

Hints are welcome.

Thanks, rolfie

Author: Irrwahn
Date: 2018-02-14 06:37 -600
To: dng
Subject: [DNG] IMPORTANT! How to fix degraded session management after Devuan ASCII upgrade.

PLEASE NOTE:
The following only applies to already existing ASCII systems that got
upgraded to the newest package versions as present in the repositories.
Fresh installations of Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 Beta should not be affected.

TL;DR
-----
Make sure you got the correct libpolkit-backend installed!

Background
----------
It would appear that under certain circumstances an unsuitable flavor
of libpolkit-backend-1-0-XXXX gets pulled in upon upgrade. This can lead
to a temporary loss of desktop session related functionality, namely the
ability to user-mount removable drives or to shutdown/restart the system
using the GUI controls provided by the respective desktop environment. The
issue was ultimately caused by the recent addition of elogind to the
repositories, or rather the repackaging of policykit-1 that followed suit.

Resolution
----------
1. Make sure you have at least one of (traditional) consolekit or (new)
elogind installed. (Note: You can have both installed and active; which
one is actually used however is decided by which libpolkit-backend you
choose to install, see 4.)

2. Make sure (at least one of) the above is activated. You may do so by
interactively running the 'pam-auth-update' command as root.

3. Ensure the following packages got installed:
     policykit-1              0.105-18+devuan2.4
     libpolkit-agent-1-0      0.105-18+devuan2.4

4. Install one of the mutually exclusive policykit backend libs, i.e.
   - EITHER -
     libpolkit-backend-1-0-elogind      0.105-18+devuan2.4  and
     libpolkit-gobject-1-0-elogind      0.105-18+devuan2.4

   - OR -
     libpolkit-backend-1-0-consolekit   0.105-18+devuan2.4  and
     libpolkit-gobject-1-0-consolekit   0.105-18+devuan2.4

depending on which session manager backend you intend to use, see 1.

In case you find you have a backend with -systemd in the name installed:
that one will _not_ work, and is most likely the cause why things went
sideways in the first place.

5. After making changes to the session management you should either reboot
the system or at least cycle through runlevel 1.

Note: Depending on what login manager you use in conjunction with which
desktop environment you might have to experiment a bit to find out which
of consolekit or elogind works best for you (or works[TM] at all).

Bottom line: As always in life, keep your backends covered. ;-)

HTH, HANVD, and enjoy the ASCII Beta!

Best regards
Urban

--
Sapere aude!

I had saved this after all. I used consolekit for a time and elogind lately. They work for my use at least.

Looks my notes are shortend, maybe even wrong and following them screwed up the installation of the second PC. Got Mate back up again, but the issues remain. I checked  and tried to compare the two installations, it looks like they are mostly identical, but e.g in the moment I can't even mount any USB stick, neither as root nor in Mate: permission denied.

I am stuck.

Thanks, rolfie

Is there a particular reason you are installing consolekit and friends? Neither MATE nor LightDM require consolekit, so maybe the consolekit packages are installed on your system but not actually being used.

I have no packages installed on my system with "consolekit" anywhere in the name. I have these with "elogind" in the name:

elogind 234.4-1+devuan1.5
libelogind0:amd64 234.4-1+devuan1.5
libpam-elogind:amd64 234.4-1+devuan1.5
libpolkit-backend-1-0-elogind:amd64 0.105-18+devuan2.4
libpolkit-gobject-1-0-elogind:amd64 0.105-18+devuan2.4

If I were you I'd backup my system, uninstall all the consolekit packages, and install the above elogind packages. I bet your permissions issues would go away.

Looked into my notes und installed:

apt install libpolkit-backend-1-0-consolekit libpolkit-gobject-1-0-consolekit

Unfortunately installing these two packages remove most of the desktop again. How can I fix the issues?

The link in my post a month ago to Lurker is dead now:

Database message source pull failure (not found):
The specified message has been deleted. 

I am sure I made a printout, but can't find the paper any more.

Thanks, rolfie