Bugzilla – Bug 950864
polkit 0.113-3.8.1 Causes KDE Device Notifier to Pop a Root Auth Dialog When Mounting USB Drives
Last modified: 2015-11-26 13:19:31 UTC
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:41.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/41.0 Build Identifier: openSUSE 13.2 x64, KDE default (4.14.9). If I use the KDE Device Notifier to mount/unmount devices, it works until I logoff then login again with the same userid. After the subsequent login, attempts to mount using the Device Notifier cause a root auth dialog to pop up. Logging off of the problem session, then logging on and off with a different userid, then logging on with the original (problem) userid fixes the mount issue. But logging off then back on with the same userid causes the Device Notifier mount attempts to pop a root auth dialog. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1) login as larry 2) use device notifier to mount, then unmount an external USB drive (multiple mount/unmount cycles if you wish). 3) logoff 4) login as larry again 5) use device notifier to mount an external USB drive - a root auth dialog pops up every time. if the root pswd is supplied the device does mount and is accessible. 6) use device notifier to ensure the USB drive is unmounted. 7) logout 8) login as bill 9) logout 10) login as larry 11) use device notifier to mount, then unmount an external USB drive (multiple mount/unmount cycles if you wish). NO root auth dialog pops up. 12) repeat steps 3 thru 11 as often as you wish - the results are always the same. Actual Results: After mount/unmount of usb device, log off, log on with same userid, attempts to mount usb device again cause a root auth req'd dialog to pop up. Expected Results: After mount/unmount of usb device, log off, log on, attempts to mount usb device again should mount the device without displaying a root auth dialog pop up. No problems for a year. Yesterday, Oct 14, 2015, YOU (Yast Online Update) updated 3 PolicyKit (polkit) packages from 0.112-3.5.1 to 0.113-3.8.1. The 3 packages were: typelib-1_0-PolKit-1_0, libpolkit0, polkit. The problem began immediately after this update. Reboot does not help.
This is not happening on my system. However, in KDE, I have a shutdown script which does: systemctl --user exit That is, it shuts down the systemd user process, which is restarted on my next login. I'm guessing that the problem the reporter has, is that he continues to use the left-over systemd user process, which is connected to the previous KDE login session. (Note that this is just a guess). Maybe try: systemctl --user exit from a terminal just before logout. And see if it then works in the next login.
systemctl --user exit Failed to start exit.target: Process org.freedesktop.systemd1 exited with status 1 It does affect the problem - the mount can be done ONCE before the problem reappears. I'm hoping for a fix rather than a work around. This just started with the latest YPU update to 0.113-3.8.1 At least one other user (gogalthorp) reports the same problem on the forums.
Same problem with my system
In addition to USB mount problem find that 113 seems to require a password for appr updates. This causes a repeating authorizations failed notifications.
this has been fixed by reverting a small change in polkit with online updates. (it is a systemd problem though, which will also be fixed) It should be fixed now I hope.