What I found is that executable path which polkit asks permission for
is different than the one specified in config in
/etc/polkit-1/actions/org.xfce.power.policy
The difference is in store location. There seems to be a bug somewhere.
Here seems to be where xfce4 and polkit intersects but I don't know in
what way it's broken:
in services/desktop.scm:
(define (xfce-polkit-settings config)
"Return the list of XFCE dependencies that provide polkit actions and
rules."
(let ((xfce (xfce-package config)))
(map (lambda (name)
((package-direct-input-selector name) xfce))
'("thunar"
"xfce4-power-manager"))))
On Wed, 11 Jun 2025 18:20:28 +0200
David Lecompte <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi Guix,
>
> I have a computer with the MATE desktop environment. My previous
> system generation was from May 25 on commit
> 22c229ff4e0869cdbcd5eabbe482fde7725e75e1, I just upgraded my system to
> commit 2d418933a46a92a545ccebe629470af0fc019c4b (from 3 days ago).
>
> After rebooting and opening a MATE session, I have a repeated popup
> message saying "Authentication is needed to run
> /gnu/store/ra8zy5yqsq1k21ffxkjv7jd8mwczm2j4-mate-power-backlight-helper'
> as the super user" and asking me to type my password.
>
> If I do so, the popup may come back immediately 3 or 4 times, then
> again after something like 10 to 15s. When clicking on "details" in
> the window, I have additionally:
> polkit.subject-pid: 2205
> polkit.caller-pid: 2498
> Action: org.freedesktop.policykit.exec
> Profider: The polkit project
>
> The process with pid 2205 is mate-power-manager and the process with
> pid 2498 is mate/power/backlight-helper. Before updating the system,
> I had never seen that.
>
> My very rough understanding is that polkit is something to get
> permission to do some actions that may require superuser rights, from
> processes without superuser, and that some rules need to be
> configured for that, so it looks like some rule might be missing.
> Could it be that some new version of some part of the MATE
> environment requires some new rule, but that rule is not setup
> automatically? Or is it another problem?
>
> Note: I have manually copied the references to the commits (this
> email is not written from the concerned computer, as I haven't
> installed email on it yet), so there could be some mistake in the
> references.
>
> Thanks for any advice.
> David.
>
