I've got an odd, one might say embarrassing problem. Time to talk about it in public!

I've been on ascii for years. This is because every time I try and do a dist-upgrade, my authorization breaks. Unless I login as root, I cannot mount volumes, change APs in nm-applet, change time and date, basically anything that consolekit/polkit was in charge of facilitating.

So I just stayed on ascii, updating packages of course. But now ascii is WAY old. I am not up for a fresh install - this is a system I've used for years and I have too many packages installed to just pack up my home directory and start a new settlement in a fresh install.

Anyway, latest is that I tried to leapfrog over beowulf and go straight to chimaera. Same problem. I got a bootable system, but authorization is all borked up. Otherwise the system works in the most lovely way you could imagine. WTF is going on with these authorization problems?!

Possibly further complicating matters is that this is an install *always* run from ram. It is only installed on disc/iso. It has never existed as a hdd install. Hence the @fsmithred in the post title.

Here are some error messages I get:

When trying to start the polkit agent (does not run as startup as it is set to do):

XX@XX:~# /usr/lib/policykit-1-gnome/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1

(polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:5422): dbind-WARNING **: 01:06:06.223: Error retrieving accessibility bus address: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ExecFailed: Failed to execute program org.a11y.Bus: No such file or directory

(polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:5422): polkit-gnome-1-WARNING **: 01:06:06.230: Unable to determine the session we are in: No session for pid 5422

Unable to determine the session we are in??! What? Here is the output of ck-list-sessions:

X@X:/home/XX# ck-list-sessions
Session3:
    unix-user = '1000'
    realname = 'XX'
    seat = 'Seat1'
    session-type = 'unspecified'
    session-class = 'user'
    session-state = 'online'
    active = FALSE
    x11-display = ''
    x11-display-device = ''
    display-device = '/dev/tty1'
    remote-host-name = ''
    is-local = TRUE
    on-since = '2022-01-20T00:38:33.346383Z'
    login-session-id = '5'
    XDG_RUNTIME_DIR = '/run/user/1000'
    VTNr = '1'
Session2:
    unix-user = '1000'
    realname = 'XX'
    seat = 'Seat1'
    session-type = 'unspecified'
    session-class = 'user'
    session-state = 'online'
    active = FALSE
    x11-display = ''
    x11-display-device = ''
    display-device = '/dev/tty3'
    remote-host-name = ''
    is-local = TRUE
    on-since = '2022-01-20T00:38:33.344794Z'
    login-session-id = '3'
    XDG_RUNTIME_DIR = '/run/user/1000'
    VTNr = '3'
Session1:
    unix-user = '1000'
    realname = 'XX'
    seat = 'Seat1'
    session-type = 'unspecified'
    session-class = 'user'
    session-state = 'online'
    active = FALSE
    x11-display = ''
    x11-display-device = ''
    display-device = '/dev/tty6'
    remote-host-name = ''
    is-local = TRUE
    on-since = '2022-01-20T00:38:33.340212Z'
    login-session-id = '2'
    XDG_RUNTIME_DIR = '/run/user/1000'
    VTNr = '6'
Session6:
    unix-user = '1000'
    realname = 'XX'
    seat = 'Seat1'
    session-type = 'unspecified'
    session-class = 'user'
    session-state = 'online'
    active = FALSE
    x11-display = ''
    x11-display-device = ''
    display-device = '/dev/tty4'
    remote-host-name = ''
    is-local = TRUE
    on-since = '2022-01-20T00:38:33.377597Z'
    login-session-id = '6'
    XDG_RUNTIME_DIR = '/run/user/1000'
    VTNr = '4'
Session5:
    unix-user = '1000'
    realname = 'XX'
    seat = 'Seat1'
    session-type = 'unspecified'
    session-class = 'user'
    session-state = 'online'
    active = FALSE
    x11-display = ''
    x11-display-device = ''
    display-device = '/dev/tty5'
    remote-host-name = ''
    is-local = TRUE
    on-since = '2022-01-20T00:38:33.357860Z'
    login-session-id = '4'
    XDG_RUNTIME_DIR = '/run/user/1000'
    VTNr = '5'
Session23:
    unix-user = '1000'
    realname = 'XX'
    seat = 'Seat1'
    session-type = 'unspecified'
    session-class = 'user'
    session-state = 'active'
    active = TRUE
    x11-display = ':0'
    x11-display-device = '/dev/tty7'
    display-device = ''
    remote-host-name = ''
    is-local = TRUE
    on-since = '2022-01-20T01:20:05.444616Z'
    login-session-id = '19'
    XDG_RUNTIME_DIR = '/run/user/1000'
    VTNr = '7'
Session4:
    unix-user = '1000'
    realname = 'XX'
    seat = 'Seat1'
    session-type = 'unspecified'
    session-class = 'user'
    session-state = 'online'
    active = FALSE
    x11-display = ''
    x11-display-device = ''
    display-device = '/dev/tty2'
    remote-host-name = ''
    is-local = TRUE
    on-since = '2022-01-20T00:38:33.352225Z'
    login-session-id = '1'
    XDG_RUNTIME_DIR = '/run/user/1000'
    VTNr = '2'

Note that the directory '/run/user/1000' does not exist on my machine.

Here is the error (consolekit? polkit?) message from nm-applet:

"Connection activation failed

(1) Not authorized to control networking."

And from trying to mount a drive:

"Error mounting filesystem

Not authorized to perform operation (udisks-error-quark, 3)"

I've even tried brute forcing it by copying over all of the consolekit/polkit directories in /etc and /usr/share from the ascii install to the "upgraded" install - no improvement.

I suspect consolekit/polkit complications only because of the research I've done on my own to try and fix this. Asking for help is my last resort.

HELP?!