polkit not running after update

[Gerrit Kühn]

Hello all,

I don't quite know where to take this, hopefully I'm not completely wrong
here.

I've just updated a couple of machines using xfce from 12.1 to 12.2. Most
work fine after the update, but one is slightly broken now. Here are
some issues I see: XCFE starts just fine but refuses for open the xfce
terminal (nothing happens). Also, logging out is not possible anymore
(desktop gets dark, but not logout selection appears).

As written in the subject, I think the main reason for this is that polkitd
isn't running. Sometimes I can see various error windows popping up
complaining about things that point into this direction, also ps doesn't
show a polkitd like on the systems that work fine.

In /var/log/messages I see the following error message from dbus:

---
Jan 18 10:58:57 beastie dbus-daemon[36795]: [system] Failed to activate
service 'org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1': timed out
(service_start_timeout=25000ms)
---


However, I'm unable to find out /why/ this happens and how to fix it. Any
hints?


cu
  Gerrit