[Pkg-xfce-devel] Root Authentication Occasionally Required for Reboot/Poweroff

Gilbert Sullivan whirly.gig at hotmail.com
Fri Sep 9 18:12:38 UTC 2011


We are occasionally seeing a request for root authentication when trying 
to shut down or restart Debian testing systems running Xfce/LightDM.

Hitting cancel dumps the user at the login prompt where s/he is required 
to move the mouse around until the "X" cursor finally appears so that 
the power state chooser button (don't know it's real name) can be used.

Obviously, entering the root password also works.

The dialog states something along the lines of requiring root 
authentication to shut down a system when users are logged on. We're 
seeing this on all of our Debian testing Xfce installations since 
switching to LightDM. We have never seen it when running gdm (v2) or 
xdm. Note that this is a fairly rare occurrence. It can't be happening 
more than once in twenty poweroff/reboot attempts, and perhaps quite a 
bit less often than that. It does seem to be more likely to happen 
following an extended user session.

This is only a minor usability issue with an easy workaround for the 
users, but I'd like to understand and fix it if I can. The contents of 
auth.log following such an incident don't seem to differ from its 
contents during normal operations.

Would anyone have a suggestion?



More information about the Pkg-xfce-devel mailing list