[CentOS] Policy kit issue on new install of 6.4

Emmett Culley

emmett at webengineer.com
Tue Mar 19 16:07:17 UTC 2013


On 03/19/2013 07:48 AM, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
> Emmett Culley wrote:
>> On 03/19/2013 07:25 AM, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
>>> Emmett Culley wrote:
>>>> Twice I've done a fresh install of a "Development" machine.  In both
>>>> cases pkexec as a normal user always returns "Error executing command as
>>>> another user: No authentication agent was found."  This keeps me from
> getting a
>>>> root command line and prevents yumex from starting from the launcher.
>>>>
>>>> I've googled and found nothing accept some references to installing
>>>> virtual box.  Checking the man pages for polkit was no help either.
>>>>
>>>> Since this only happens when I install the "Development" group I must
>>>> assume that some package is missing, and I am at a loss as to where to
>>>> look.
>>>>
>>>> Any clues?
>>>
>>> Completely unfamiliar with pkexec, but it sounds as though no
>>> authentication agent is running. Is something like ssh-agent running,
>>> and have you added credentials (e.g. ssh-add)?
>>
>> Kwallet is running and working as I get prompted, as expected, for my
>> private key passwords when appropriate.
>>
>> I didn't know anything about pkexec either, until now.  I only found out
>> about it by googling for the error quoted above.  I have, in the past, run
>> into issues starting a root terminal from the launcher (KDE), but it has
>> always returned to normal after a restart or re-login.  This is the first
>> time it has been persistent and consistent.
>>
>> All the searches seem to indicate that the polkit daemon is not configured
>> correctly, but in no case is there any suggestions on how to configure it.
>>
>> I'll keep looking for documentation.
> 
> Have you read the man page? I just did, and I've got a really good guess
> as to why it says that: it appears to want to work like sudo  -
> someotheruser
> 
>        mark
It turns out that every machine I've updated to 6.4 works like this.  Most of the others I only log into occasionally, and as root.

I suppose it is possible that they were like this before I upgraded to 6.4.  I'll have to build a 6.3 machine and find out.

Emmett




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