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I experimented with some custom Gnome PPAs (ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3 and ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3-staging) and newer versions of lightdm through which I had hoped to fix a problem with a blank screen on resume from suspend. Although not completely sure, this might have caused the problem I am facing now.

I am no longer able to run elementary software such as:

The Software Updater (doesn't prompt me with the root password dialog prompt anymore):

Software Updater

The Network Manager:

Network Manager

What would you recommend me to do?

  • I have been thinking about a fresh installation but I don't have a separate /home partition. Thus I would loose my private data. Moreover, I would loose my network manager connection and all custom modifications done in /etc
  • I already purged the Gnome3 PPAs and reverted the packages but the problem still persists
  • I had been looking into possibilities of resetting / re-installing all default elementary OS packages but couldn't find a way of doing so.
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  • 2
    Don't get me wrong, but that doesn't just "happen" - Did you change anything regarding your user account(s)?
    – embik
    Jul 15, 2015 at 14:59
  • @embik I understand your remark. I don't know what has precisely caused this issue to occur. I experimented with some custom Gnome3 PPAs lately. I already purged all of them. I am still looking for the package which might be causing the issue. Do you know which package is responsible for these type of user permissions? Aside from running the Software Updater normally, I didn't modify my user account.
    – orschiro
    Jul 15, 2015 at 15:21
  • @embik It turns out that this is not only an issue of the updater. I updated my question.
    – orschiro
    Jul 16, 2015 at 6:26
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    @embik Yes, running sudo update-manager does work fine. I suspect an issue with polkit, lightdm, pam but I don't know how to trace back the issue properly. Apologies for being so imprecise.
    – orschiro
    Jul 16, 2015 at 8:48
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    Okay, I have absolutely no clue how to debug pam and polkit issues. My proposal is to simply re-install. Back up all relevant data from your /home directory and do a full new installation. This may sound harsh, but that's what you get from adding repositories not compatible with your distro.
    – embik
    Jul 16, 2015 at 10:52

1 Answer 1

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I suspect one of the following:

  • logind is not correctly assigning your session a logind session
  • you are not in the adm group
  • polkit is broken for some other reason

You can make sure that the second case is not causing an issue by adding your user to the adm group: sudo adduser @USERNAME@ adm (replace @USERNAME@ with your username).

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