Bug#795296: "You are not allowed to save the configuration" (both root and ordinary user)

[Willi Mann <willi@debian.org>]

Hi Maxy,

Am 2017-03-31 um 18:25 schrieb Maximiliano Curia:
> 
>> in the SDDM settings window, it tells me the same as when I try it as
>> ordinary user (I'm not allowed to save the configuration, transl. from
>> German).
> 
>>> The changes made as root weren't applied to the /etc/sddm.conf file?
> 
>> Unfortunately not.
> 
> As mentioned writting this change as root don't need an interaction with
> the agent so this should work, otherwise it's policykit at fault, not
> the agent. (also, you don't have an agent running as root).
> 
> Mmh, are you using apparmor with a particular configuration?

no, apparmor is not installed.
> 
> Do you have another session started as root?
> Do you have another X session started with your user?

There is no other session running as root, except for an SSH session.
And I have no keyboard or mouse attached to this machine, I'm using
synergy instead.

>>> (assuming that you tested this with the sddm kcm)
> 
>>>>> Do you have the polkit-kde-authentication-agent-1 service running?
> 
>>>> I have such a process running, under the desktop's user uid.
> 
> Well, any agent should be replaceable, you can kill it and start a
> different one, let's say lxqt-policykit's lxqt-policykit-agent.
> 
> You can test this with pkexec bash to avoid mudding the test with the
> kcm authhelper, if it works with lxqt-policykit-agent then the issue is
> in the kde agent, otherwise, please reassign the issue to policykit-1

I used the gnome one. pkexec bash then works. However, the problem with
configuring sddm persists - it still says I'm not allowed to save the
configuration.

Apart from that, I made another strange observation:

If I recompile policykit-1=0.105-17 (directly on the system, without
clean chroot) and install it and the KDE policykit agent is running,
pkexec bash does ask for a password on the command line:


% pkexec bash
==== AUTHENTICATING FOR org.freedesktop.policykit.exec ===
Authentication is needed to run `/bin/bash' as the super user
Authenticating as: root
Password:
polkit-agent-helper-1: error response to PolicyKit daemon:
GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1.Error.Failed: No session for cookie
==== AUTHENTICATION FAILED ===
Error executing command as another user: Not authorized

This incident has been reported.


The password was correct, but it fails on some other issue. The
dependencies of the two package versions are the same. ldd also reports
no differences on the polkitd and pkexec binaries' dependencies.

thanks
Willi