Comment 0 for bug 760452

Binary package hint: policykit-1-gnome

Hi,
I would like to (re)open a bug. The behavior is exactly the same as these, but the triggering conditions are different:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dbus/+bug/568748
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dbus/+bug/568748.

We're using many Ubuntu 10.04 LTS clients, kerberized to authenticate against a Kerberos Realm. We had to switch to a new kerberos Realm, thus we overwrote the settings on the clients and rebooted the machines.
After the reboot the machines authenticated correctly against the new realm and everything seemed right.
We later discovered it was not possible, for graphical programs requesting root privileges, to prompt for password. The password dialog didn't appear. One of the affected program is ubuntu software center, just to name one.

We tackled down the problem to the polkit-agent: after we changed the kerberos and pam settings, it doesn't start anymore at first login, even if the /etc/xdg/autostart/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1.desktop file is present and correct.
The strange behavior is this: the polkit-agent doesn't start at first login but, If the user logs out and in again, the polkit-agent starts just fine. The problem can be easily reproduced: after a reboot, the user must log in, log out, and log in again for the agent to start properly (or start it manually, of course).

I can't find any helpful hint on the logs mentioning polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1. I'm providing you the .xsession-error and .xsession-error.old.

These are the packages we installed during the change of Kerberos Realm:

The following extra packages will be installed:
  libasn1-8-heimdal libgssapi2-heimdal libheimntlm0-heimdal libhx509-4-heimdal
  libkrb5-25-heimdal libroken18-heimdal libwind0-heimdal
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  sudo
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libasn1-8-heimdal libgssapi2-heimdal libheimntlm0-heimdal libhx509-4-heimdal
  libkrb5-25-heimdal libroken18-heimdal libsasl2-modules-gssapi-heimdal
  libwind0-heimdal sudo-ldap

Further details about OS release and package version:

lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS
Release: 10.04

apt-cache policy policykit-1-gnome
policykit-1-gnome:
  Installed: 0.96-2ubuntu2
  Candidate: 0.96-2ubuntu2
  Version table:
 *** 0.96-2ubuntu2 0
        500 http://repo.services.kambi.com/se.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Thank you!