I ran into a bit of a bug (two bugs actually?):

  • tried to install a debian package using gnome-software
  • was (rightfully) asked to authenticate with the dialog shown in the screenshot
  • the polkit permissions are wrong (this is bug number 1, probably I can report it to my distro’s polkitd package)
  • clicking “cancel” did not make the dialog go away
  • the dialog blocked most interactions with any other windows (screenshots worked - but that was all)
  • killing the process that spawned the dialog (gnome-software) did not make the dialog go away (this is the thing that’s annoying me most)

I wasn’t able to find out which process was responsible for this, so I also don’t know which package to report it for… Ended up killing my entire gnome session to be able to continue.

Does anyone have an idea?

  • deadcream@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    4·
    12 days ago

    It’s called a “polkit agent”. Every DE has one. In GNOME it’s a part of the gnome-shell. Killing gnome-software didn’t work because it shows the dialog indirectly. It asked permission from polkit daemon, which determined that user needs to provide credentials, so polkit asked an “agent” (which is in this case gnome-shell) to show authentication dialog.

    Although the error message complains about permissions of executable which is a part of polkit itself. But the fact that cancel button didn’t work is also a bug in gnome-shell.

    • myotheraccount@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      12 days ago

      Thanks, that’s very helpful!

      It turned out the issue was a version conflict: I had update polkit, but gnome was still running with the old library in memory. Apparently the polkit-agent binaries are no longer supposed to be setuid root. After restarting gnome-shell, the bug no longer occurs.

      This is the debian bug, for those interested: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1125141

    • myotheraccount@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      12 days ago
      • polkitd runs as a separate user, so it’s not able to create windows in the user’s session (at least not without the help of a program running as the logged in user, like waypipe)
      • xprop might work, if I were using X, but I’m not
      • wlprop is not a general tool unfortunately, it’s specific to sway

      Anyway, thanks for trying :)