Several permissions problems after upgrading to 5.5.3

[mgiammarco]

Hello,
I have kubuntu 15.10 installed from scratch.
I updated kde to 5.5.3 using backports ppa.
Now I have these problems:

1) when I mount a disk or I suspend or I do a privileged operation it asks me the user password
2) I cannot resume from suspend (probably it is due to 1))
3) I have only dummy audio output (I used to have one audio card and two hdmi audio devices)

Can you help me?
Can you give me hints of where I can start to debug?

Thanks,
Mario

[whatthefunk]

Many of the same problems here. I managed to fix the audio problems. See my posts in this thread: https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...al-pulse-sound

[mgiammarco]

I have tried your fix (reinstalling alsa and pulseaudio) and it does not work. Tomorrow I will try again.

[mgiammarco]

Any news? Any ideas? Some workarounds?
Where can I start debugging?

[whatthefunk]

For number one, that is expected behavior. It should ask you for your password before doing those actions.
Number two, I dont know. Im having a lot of the same problems with suspend and shutdown.
Number three...are you still getting the same dummy audio output?

[mgiammarco]

Actually it asks me password even to authorize suspension. I suspect that when I resume it asks a password again but I cannot see it.
Yes unfortunately I have only dummy audio output.
I do not understand how can kde destroy the audio configuration. Pulse audio is a different software.

[jlittle]

I suspect that when I resume it asks a password again but I cannot see it.

Resume asking for a password again is the screen locker activating, set to 10 minutes by default. I *hate* it, and always change the system setting for the screen locker to "never". Conceivably that might help you.

Regards, John Little

[alest]

Problems after upgrade to Plasma 5.5.3

I had similar problems on Kubuntu 15.10 after last upgrade to Plasma 5.5.3 (from Kubuntu's ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports). I think there are some serious issues regarding user rights.

1. No audio, just "Dummy Output"

First I did this:

sudo alsa force-reload
# then as a normal user:
killall pulseaudio

This solves the problem but only until next boot. Actually it was because of I wasn't a member of "audio" group. (Membership list can be displayed with "groups my_user_name")
So the permanent solution is add yourself to the group:

sudo usermod -aG audio my_user_name

And then logout and login. Or if it doesn't take effect, then restart sddm service or reboot completely.

2. Muon doesn't get authorization
No updates can be installed. Instead Muon gives this error message: "This operation cannot continue since proper authorization was not provided."
Reason: PolicyKit-Kde, The KDE PolicyKit Authorization manager is missing
Solution: install the package polkit-kde-1 back

sudo apt-get install polkit-kde-1

3. Video playback error: libGL error: failed to open drm device: Permission denied
Same as with no audio. The user has to be in "video" group.
Solution: add yourself to the group

[COLOR=#000000][FONT=Courier New]sudo usermod -aG video my_user_name[/FONT][/COLOR]

4. insufficient rights to suspend a computer
I don't know if the following is proper solution but it helps.
These rights are defined in the file /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.login1.policy.
Make a backup and edit it as root. Find:

<action id="org.freedesktop.login1.suspend"> and
<action id="org.freedesktop.login1.suspend-ignore-inhibit">

and set the options to

<allow_any>yes</allow_any>
<allow_inactive>yes</allow_inactive>
<allow_active>yes</allow_active>

No restart is needed.

Note: There is a GUI program for this called Polkid-explorer. But it's not in Kubuntu repositories.
https://github.com/scarygliders/polkit-explorer

I had problem to mount a DVD too but it disappeared after one reboot. Don't know why.


5. computer overload by apt-check process
My laptop nearly freezes when checking for updates. Sometimes it can be stopped by

sudo killall apt-check

It's a reported bug no 358359. https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=358359

[whatthefunk]

Ive noticed the same thing, alest. User permissions seem to be messed up for a lot of things.

[richhorn]

Yes, I can confirm multiple permissions-related issues following recent 15.10 updates.

Thanks @alest,

The first 3 commands worked to solve these paticular issues for me.
4 did not work, and I still cannot use sleep mode since recent 15.10 update.
5 not relevant to my system.

Cheers,