xfce4 install on Ubuntu 18.04 has no polkit agent

Bug #1821364 reported by markling
18
This bug affects 4 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
xfce4 (Debian)
New
Unknown
xfce4 (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

The problem was evident as en error message when trying run 'Language Support' (gnome-language-selector) after install. (This was the advised way to get the Atom spell-checker working).

Error described here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1031319/language-support-in-18-04-not-working-org-freedesktop-policykiterror-failed/1127862#1127862

It occurred on a fresh install of Ubuntu 18.04 after installing xfce4.

No PolicyKit Authentication Agent was installed - or at least not one that xfce seemed to recognise.

I solved the problem by installing one:

    $ sudo apt install policykit-1-gnome

That installed the package: /usr/lib/policykit-1-gnome/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1.

It seemed to update the autostart list.

Though there is such a thing as 'xfce-polkit' and 'xfce-polkit-git', I could not see them on my machine and Debian [reports][3], in it's account of the package policykit-1-gnome, that xfce still uses the gnome polkit agent:

"This implementation was originally designed for GNOME 2, but most GNOME-based desktop environments, including GNOME 3, GNOME Flashback, and MATE, have their own built-in PolicyKit agents and no longer use this one. The remaining users of this implementation are Cinnamon, XFCE and Unity."

(https://packages.debian.org/sid/policykit-1-gnome)

It is worth noting that the terminal emulator that comes default in Ubuntu and is still default after installing xfce (gnome terminal) would not run polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1 after install. I understand it may have been necessary, perhaps ironically, to run it an an xterm. I didn't attempt this. But all was well after restart.

affects: dbus (Ubuntu) → xfce4 (Ubuntu)
Revision history for this message
Theo Linkspfeifer (lastonestanding) wrote :

The package xfce4 depends on thunar, and starting with 18.10 thunar now recommends policykit-1-gnome.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=842378

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Changed in xfce4 (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
mdalacu (mdalacu) wrote :

Same problem after updating to 19.10. I had to install it manually

Changed in xfce4 (Debian):
status: Unknown → New
Revision history for this message
Travisgevans (travisgevans) wrote :

I hit this upon manually installing Xfce4 after a fresh Ubuntu 20.04 installation. And even though Thunar has a Recommends for policykit-1-gnome, it nonetheless was not installed when Thunar was installed for some reason, and I had to install it manually anyway.

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