Not authorized to run synaptic

[Bruno Schneider]

Hi all,

I'm running Debian Testing, using XFCE. I run synaptic package manager
from a launcher I made a few years ago. After a system upgrade today,
I can no longer run synaptic from the launcher.

Using the command line (same command as the launcher), I got this:

$ /usr/bin/synaptic-pkexec
Error executing command as another user: Not authorized
This incident has been reported.

If I use sudo, then it works, but pkexec used to open a graphical
password input to run synaptic as root, which is what I want, for
opening it using the launcher. What did I break?

--
Bruno Schneider

[zithro]

It seems you are in the sudo group, so pkexec should work.
"/usr/bin/synaptic-pkexec" is a one line shell script, a simple wrapper
to "pkexec".

As you're using Debian testing:
- was pkexec/policykit upgraded today ?
- what was updated today ?
ie. read the logs in /var/log/apt/*
- did you check the changelog for pkexec ?
$ zcat /usr/share/doc/pkexec/changelog.Debian.gz

Also, the pkexec man page says :

As a result, pkexec will not by default allow
you to run X11 applications as another user since the $DISPLAY
and $XAUTHORITY environment variables are not
set. These two variables will be retained if the
org.freedesktop.policykit.exec.allow_gui annotation on an
action is set to a nonempty value; this is discouraged, though, and
should only be used for legacy programs.


--
++
zithro / Cyril

[Joe]

It's not obvious. I run synaptic from a standard menu launcher, where
the command is just synaptic-pkexec. It then requests the root password
before running. I'm on sid, which still ought to be very close to
testing at the moment.

--
Joe

[Christian Britz]

Am 28.08.23 um 19:24 schrieb Joe:

> It's not obvious. I run synaptic from a standard menu launcher, where
> the command is just synaptic-pkexec. It then requests the root password
> before running. I'm on sid, which still ought to be very close to
> testing at the moment.

For me it asks for the user's password (user has sudo priviledges).
So it seems synaptic-pkexec can deal with both cases. No idea what is
going wrong in the original poster's case.


--
https://www.cb-fraggle.de

[Bruno Schneider]

Apparently, some service needed to be restarted, because the problem
went away after a reboot. Perhaps policykit?

Anyway, for future reference, I'm not on the sudo group and I found
nothing interesting on changelogs. Something (I guess pkexec) asks for
the root password (not the user's password) before allowing synaptic
to run and doesn't care whether the user is allowed to sudo (my user
is allowed).

--
Bruno Schneider

[Joe]

That agrees with my experience. I don't use a sudo group, but I am of
course in sudoers. As far as I'm aware, the only other application
asking for the root password is gparted, though there may be other
system applications that do.

--
Joe