polkit not running after update

[Gerrit Kühn]

Am Mon, 18 Jan 2021 11:41:07 +0100
schrieb Guido Falsi <mad at madpilot.net>:

> > ---
> > 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?  

> Not easy to guess. Also, while I do work on xfce ports I know little 
> about polkit details. xfce uses it, but it's not part of xfce.

Thanks for your time. Is there any better place where I could ask
about this?

> look into .xsession-errors, that's where output from user X11 session 
> goes, maybe you can find some hint there. Do expect various scary 
> warnings there, but most are really just noise.

I'm using startxfce4 on the commandline, so I don't have .xesssion-errors.
I didn't see any other striking issues on the commandline output, apart
from the PolicyKit error messages.

> Check if you have any core dumps from polkit laying around. I think the 
> root directory is the most likely place.

No, nothing like like that.

> You could also try launching polkitd by hand as a user or as root and 
> see what it says It should also have a --debug flag.

Turns out, it rather has a --no-debug flag. ;-)
With debugging enabled I get the following:

---
root at beastie:~ # /usr/local/lib/polkit-1/polkitd 
Successfully changed to user polkitd
11:52:18.901: Loading rules from directory /usr/local/etc/polkit-1/rules.d
11:52:18.901: Loading rules from directory
/usr/local/share/polkit-1/rules.d 11:52:18.901: Finished loading,
compiling and executing 1 rules Entering main event loop
Connected to the system bus
11:52:18.903: Lost the name org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1 - exiting
Shutting down
Exiting with code 0
---

Searching about this, this looks like the communication with dbus is not
working properly. This matches the error message I previously got from the
other end (dbus) in /var/log/messages. Somehow the two processes fail to
cumminucate with each other.

> Trying to reinstall it (via ports if using ports o with pkg upgrade -f 
> if using binary packages) could help. Same for it's requirements, I get:

Yes, I already tried that, unfortunately without any success.


cu
  Gerrit