Authentication is required

fuerstu · May 29, 2013, 8:47am

On my laptop I have Opensuse 12.4 KDE 4.10.2. Today we received several pop-up notification stating
Authentication is required to refresh the system resources
AN application is attempting to perform an action that requires privileges. The tickbox remember the authorisation is already ticked.
Unter details is written
Application:
Action: Refresh system sources
Vendor: The PackageKit Project
polkit.subject-pid: 1015
polkit.caller-pid: 4329

What is the meaning - did I catch a virus or malicious software?
I did on commandline:
ps -ef | grep 1015
uli 1015 1 0 08:47 ? 00:00:09 kdeinit4: kded4 [kdeinit]
uli 4368 4302 0 18:32 pts/1 00:00:00 grep --color=auto 1015
ps -ef | grep 4329
root 4329 1 0 18:29 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/packagekitd
uli 4400 4302 0 18:34 pts/1 00:00:00 grep --color=auto 4329

Is anyone able to shed light on this?
Regards
Uli

wolfi323 · May 29, 2013, 9:25am

There is no Opensuse 12.4. I guess you mean 12.3?

Today we received several pop-up notification stating
Authentication is required to refresh the system resources
AN application is attempting to perform an action that requires privileges. The tickbox remember the authorisation is already ticked.
Unter details is written
Application:
Action: Refresh system sources
Vendor: The PackageKit Project
polkit.subject-pid: 1015
polkit.caller-pid: 4329

What is the meaning - did I catch a virus or malicious software?

No. Although some people would call PackageKit “malicious software” I guess…
It’s just the update applet trying to look for updates. But apparently your polkit rules are setup to strictly and it isn’t allowed to without you entering the root password.
And the tickbox “Remember the authorisation” just doesn’t work, it never did.

Please type the following in a terminal window (Konsole, f.e.) and post the output:

egrep "(SECURITY|POLKIT_DEFAULT_PRIVS)" /etc/sysconfig/security

grep system-sources-refresh /etc/polkit*

and

sudo grep -RA1 system-sources-refresh /etc/polkit-1/

You will have to enter the root password for the last one.

knurpht · May 29, 2013, 11:10am

In addition: please post output between CODE tags, the # in the editor.

mike7757 · May 29, 2013, 7:53pm

My pc is doing the same thing, this authentication bologna is driving me nuts. I even have to give authentication to mount and eject flash drives. All this takes place after the last update.
I have had nothing but a quirky system for some time now, lots of kernel panics at shutdowns. and this is just another one for the list.

I believe a re-install is in my near future.

wolfi323 · May 29, 2013, 7:59pm

Well, if you provide the output I asked from the OP, I may be able to help you regarding this problem…

fuerstu · May 30, 2013, 5:10am

OK - first of all - yes I ment Opensuse 12.3 - was already thinking about KDE… must be old age!

Thanks for your replies - first the output:

uli@linux-dfsr:~> egrep "(SECURITY|POLKIT_DEFAULT_PRIVS)" /etc/sysconfig/security
# PERMISSION_SECURITY. If PERMISSION_SECURITY contains 'secure' or
POLKIT_DEFAULT_PRIVS=""
PERMISSION_SECURITY="easy local"
uli@linux-dfsr:~> grep system-sources-refresh /etc/polkit*
grep: /etc/polkit-1: Is a directory
/etc/polkit-default-privs.restrictive:org.freedesktop.packagekit.system-sources-refresh               auth_admin_keep_always
/etc/polkit-default-privs.standard:org.freedesktop.packagekit.system-sources-refresh               auth_admin_keep_always:auth_admin_keep_always:yes
uli@linux-dfsr:~> sudo grep -RA1 system-sources-refresh /etc/polkit-1/
root's password:
/etc/polkit-1/rules.d/90-default-privs.rules:           'org.freedesktop.packagekit.system-sources-refresh':
/etc/polkit-1/rules.d/90-default-privs.rules-                    'auth_admin_keep', 'auth_admin_keep', 'yes' ],

Hope that tells something to someone.
Cheers and thanks in advance - your help is very much appreciatet
Uli

wolfi323 · May 30, 2013, 11:46am

Well, those look ok. So the active user shouldn’t need a root password.

So next, please post the output of:

loginctl

and

pkaction --action-id org.freedesktop.packagekit.system-sources-refresh --verbose

fuerstu · May 31, 2013, 3:33am

Thanks, wolfi323
Here is the output:

uli@linux-dfsr:~> loginctl


   SESSION        UID USER             SEAT            
         1       1000 uli              seat0           

1 sessions listed.

and

uli@linux-dfsr:~> pkaction --action-id org.freedesktop.packagekit.system-sources-refresh --verbose
org.freedesktop.packagekit.system-sources-refresh:
  description:       Refresh system sources
  message:           Authentication is required to refresh the system sources
  vendor:            The PackageKit Project
  vendor_url:        http://www.packagekit.org/
  icon:              package-x-generic
  implicit any:      no
  implicit inactive: no
  implicit active:   yes

The other thing to mention is that this “Authentication is required” pop-up hasn’t been here yesterday or today.

Thanks
Uli

wolfi323 · May 31, 2013, 11:04am

fuerstu:

Thanks, wolfi323
Here is the output:

uli@linux-dfsr:~> loginctl


   SESSION        UID USER             SEAT            
         1       1000 uli              seat0           

1 sessions listed.

and

uli@linux-dfsr:~> pkaction --action-id org.freedesktop.packagekit.system-sources-refresh --verbose
org.freedesktop.packagekit.system-sources-refresh:
  description:       Refresh system sources
  message:           Authentication is required to refresh the system sources
  vendor:            The PackageKit Project
  vendor_url:        http://www.packagekit.org/
  icon:              package-x-generic
  implicit any:      no
  implicit inactive: no
  implicit active:   yes

Also this is ok.

The other thing to mention is that this “Authentication is required” pop-up hasn’t been here yesterday or today.

Well, according to your policies setup this popup should not appear anyway.
Since you didn’t have this for 2 days, maybe your setup got fixed in the meantime? (by an update maybe)

Please report back if it occurs again and check if your user session is listed in “loginctl” then.

And another question: do you boot normally to runlevel 5 (graphical system), or do you have a special setup?
There can be problems with polkit if not all necessary services are running…

fuerstu · June 1, 2013, 6:17am

Thanks wolfi323
Today the pop-up came on again. the loginctl gives the following results:

  SESSION        UID USER             SEAT            
         2       1000 uli                              

1 sessions listed.

And yes - I boot normally straight into runlevel 5 and the only difference to may other setups is that I don’t have any windows - only opensuse. THis is an old (2 years) laptop from my son and there were problems with windows7 so he gave it to me as Christmas present. So I wiped windows, checked the harddrive and installed opensuse. I run here a network with several computers (up to 10 years old), with file server and media server all under linux. Otherwise all should be standard. The software installed leans heavily towards multimedia, but there are also libreoffice, calligra and lyx installed. So nothing that can justify the pop-up. I read some time ago that you should not use apper for updates and I haven’t used it for a while. But on this computer the updates were done through apper. I checked afterwards once with yast2 whether it missed out some packages but there was no result.

I updated the kernel on this laptop since I had problems with the driver for the network card after installation. Should still be in the forums under install, boot, login. The kernel is:

uli@linux-dfsr:~> uname -r
3.9.4-1.g51bf0ff-desktop

Cheers
Uli

wolfi323 · June 1, 2013, 11:54am

fuerstu:

Today the pop-up came on again. the loginctl gives the following results:
  SESSION        UID USER             SEAT            
         2       1000 uli                              

1 sessions listed.

Hm. The difference here is, that the session nr is 2 instead of 1. Was this right after boot or did you logout and login again?

Oh and there’s no seat listed. That must be the problem!
I have to think about this…

So nothing that can justify the pop-up. I read some time ago that you should not use apper for updates and I haven’t used it for a while. But on this computer the updates were done through apper. I checked afterwards once with yast2 whether it missed out some packages but there was no result.

Well, that tale about apper is not true anymore. It (the PackageKit zypp backend to be exact) had problems in the past but they mostly have been fixed up to now.
But of course that password request does come from Apper (PackageKit to be more precise).

I updated the kernel on this laptop since I had problems with the driver for the network card after installation. Should still be in the forums under install, boot, login. The kernel is:

uli@linux-dfsr:~> uname -r
3.9.4-1.g51bf0ff-desktop

I don’t think te kernel plays a role in this.

Well, according to your setup this popup should not appear.
So something must go wrong.
Do you have other problems when this popop appears, like sound not working or having to type in the password for other things as well like mounting USB drives or CDs/DVDs?
And are you asked for a password if you run Apper manually and check for updates? (it’s located in the startmenu in System->Configuration)?

If we can’t find out what happens, the last resort would be to disable Apper in KDE’s systemsettings or uninstall PackageKit.

fuerstu · June 2, 2013, 5:57am

Thanks, wolfie323, unfortunately I cannot tell you the difference between the two logins since they are used by me and my wife, although she assured me she has done nothing different. I noticed as well that there is no SEAT listed but normally I make sure there is a seat in front of the computer and I didn’t know it was supplied by the software :). But joke aside - I have no idea what the SEAT is.

And no problems with sound, USB or DVD either. No asking for password either if I manually start Apper.

arvidjaar · June 2, 2013, 6:46am

The real difference is that seat name is missing, so this session is not considered to be local active session. There was similar discussion on opensuse list: [opensuse] OpenSuse 12.3: cannot mount USB key as user](http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/SuSE/2013-03/msg00867.html), but it does not have any resolution.

wolfi323 · June 3, 2013, 11:27am

This seems to be related to:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=816942

Could you confirm that downgrading kdm (and its dependencies) to 4.10.0 from the Oss repo resolves this issue?
Run “loginctl” to check.

fuerstu · June 4, 2013, 3:43am

The bug report refers to x86-64 hardware - this is a 32 bit laptop. I don’t know whether this makes any difference. Further it says:

Yes, seen that, but it’s hardly kdm (alone), as the code between 4.10.0 and
4.10.2/3 didn’t change, other than translations
.
I can have try downgrading next weekend to try if there is any difference - the problem is of course that sometimes it seems the SEAT is there - at other times it is not. What would be the easiest way to downgrade to KDE 4.10.0?
Cheers
Uli

wolfi323 · June 4, 2013, 8:21am

32bit vs 64bit shouldn’t matter in this case. In fact, the system where I could reproduce that bug was 32bit.

In the meantime I found out that downgrading to 4.10.0 also doesn’t reliably fix that (although it seems to happen more seldom).
So no use to try that.

The missing seat problem seems to happen if plymouth is still running when kdm starts up. The people in the bugreport have this problem when booting to runlevel 3 and calling “init 5” manually, but I have the feeling it could also happen when booting to runlevel 5…

If you indeed suffer that same problem (it really sounds like you do), you could do one of the following:

use xdm as displaymanager (maybe gdm works too, no idea)
or
remove plymouth by either uninstalling it or just renaming the file /usr/sbin/plymouthd
It would be good to know if the 2nd one fixes your problem (and we would know then that it is indeed the same problem), so could you please try that?
Just do:

sudo mv /usr/sbin/plymouthd /usr/sbin/plymouthd.disabled

(or uninstall the package “plymouth”)
Hopefully this would fix your problem. (but you will lose the bootsplash as a consequence of course)

To revert that again you would do:

sudo mv /usr/sbin/plymouthd.disabled /usr/sbin/plymouthd

(or install “plymouth” again)

fuerstu · June 4, 2013, 9:06am

OK, the plymouthd is renamed. Let us see how it is going. Today the seat was there anyway and no authentication request.
Will let you know how it goes.
Cheers
Uli

fuerstu · June 9, 2013, 3:02am

OK - just to update - since renaming plymouthd there was no more the pop-up requesting authentication and the command loginctl always showed a seat. Although that is no proof since the logins were just once or twice a day but the indication is that it is fine now. Thanks everyone for your help.
Cheers
Uli

wolfi323 · June 17, 2013, 7:18pm

FYI, a fixed plymouth package has just been released to the standard update repo.
So you could rename plymouthd back to its original name and install the update.

If you already have installed the update, you maybe should remove your renamed plymouthd…

tsu2 · June 17, 2013, 7:41pm

Also,
Would like to know which openSUSE you’re running, I doubt it’s “12.4” as you described earlier… Is this an 11.4 or a 12.3 for example?

Am also curious about the kernel you’re running, if your installation has been updated enough to run KDE 4.10x or higher, why you might still be running kernel 3.9.x (3.10.x is current standard).

None of these are likely directly related to your described issue but might provide clues about your system setup.

TSU