Can only shutdown as root [SOLVED]

catchpole · Last edited by catchpole on Wed Jan 28, 2015 7:07 am; edited 1 time in total

I've installed a regular user and xfce desktop.
When I boot up and login as a regular user I can't logout unless I login as root first.
The shutdown option in xfce is grayed out.
If I exit from xfce and go back to the command line and try "shutdown -h now" I get a message "-bash: shutdown: command not found.

The regular user was given the "Wheel" rights when I created it.

How can I check and adjust the user rights so that I can shutdown without using root?
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khayyam · Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 12:35 pm Post subject: Re: Can only shutdown as root

Hypnos · Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 1:07 pm Post subject:

Do you have the "consolekit" USE flag enabled?
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catchpole · Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 3:02 pm Post subject:

Hi khayyam,

I get these results as root from your command line input:

khayyam · Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 8:23 pm Post subject:

Hypnos · Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2015 1:40 am Post subject:

Read here: http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:AMD64/Working/USE

To find out what USE flags you have enabled currently, run

catchpole · Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2015 5:14 am Post subject:

Hi Hypnos,

Consolekit is present in the output of: "emerge --info | grep ^USE"

I do have a shutdown button but its grayed out and ineffective.

Edit:
I have an error message on boot up. Is this connected?

Hypnos · Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2015 1:56 pm Post subject:

How do you launch XFCE when you do startx ?

If you invoke "startxfce4" that should set up the console session for you; if not, you have to do it yourself with "ck-launch xfce4-session" .
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davidm · Guru Joined: 26 Apr 2009 Posts: 557 Location: US

catchpole · Posted: Sun Jan 18, 2015 10:35 am Post subject:

Hi Hypnos,

I did what is suggested in the Gentoo HowTo for xfce4

cwr · Veteran Joined: 17 Dec 2005 Posts: 1969

I use sudo to shutdown. /etc/sudoers has the entries:

Hans-25 · n00b Joined: 06 Jan 2015 Posts: 7

I have the same circumstance in a newly installed Gentoo 64 without any desktop or windowing. So I conclude this is NOT a problem related to higher level packages but a very basic issue.

I would have thought the user has to be in a specific group but I lack knowledge in which!
I tried "su shutdown now" but I wasn't able to enter the (correctly typed) password successfully (looks like a bug to me!)
So I'm still not happy about this behaviour. This is good for a concurrent multi-user system, but most environments will not need it.

khayyam · Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2015 11:10 am Post subject:

Hans-25 · n00b Joined: 06 Jan 2015 Posts: 7

You appear to be the type of "Advocates" that every forum would be proud of, Mr. Khayam!

From "wild guess"-ing to superstitious jumping on other forum members. If you don't like my contributions, which you have shown in various threads, I strongly suggest you don't answer them until perhaps you happen to be a Moderator!

My problem is exactly the same, namely "Can only shutdown as root". My non-root user is in the "wheel" group but he can't shutdown; what is more, the "shutdown" command is not visible to him at all. The command "su shutdown x now" does not help, although the "su" part may be partially functioning (asking for a password).

Any guessing about xfce appears superfluous at this point.

John R. Graham · Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2015 8:47 pm Post subject:

Hans-25,

A few things.

First of all, I don't see any posts where you've interacted with khayyam before. Are you perhaps operating a duplicate account? Should we know you by a different name? If so, I need to let you know that that's against the Forum Guidelines.
Second, there's a kink in your cable, so to speak. The correct command is not as you've written, but instead
Code:

sudo shutdown -h now
That's "sudo" and not "su". Try that and report back. You may indeed not have the same issue as the OP (or any technical issue at all).
Finally, your tone is not really consistent with the Forum Guidelines, either. Please give 'em a review before proceeding.

- John
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catchpole · Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2015 12:51 pm Post subject:

Hi cwr,

Please excuse my ignorance, can you explain the "ALL=(ALL) PASSWD" in:

cwr · Veteran Joined: 17 Dec 2005 Posts: 1969

No, sixpence is the local system name. The line in /etc/sudoers permits anyone in the wheel
group to run /bin/su on sixpence without a password.

The user cwr is in the group file, which has the entry:

wheel:x:10:root,build,cwr

The system then shuts down with the command: "sudo shutdown -h now"

Will

(And yes, sudo is intended to permit specific commands. However, some distros uses "sudo su"
to get a root login. The setup is done in /etc/sudoers - use visudo to edit it, since it also checks
the file format so you don't lock yourself out.)

eccerr0r · Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2015 10:17 pm Post subject:

It seems most people want to choose to head down the road of using sudo to attain root privileges to shutdown - it works just fine, but if anyone wants the shutdown button to work:

When I select "logout" or use the user applet on my systems, the "shutdown" "hibernate" "suspend" "restart" buttons show up fine and can be clicked. Xfce uses Consolekit to be able to use these functions (and the kernel must have hibernate/shutdown enabled to use those). There's some information on that page about how to setup (ck-launch-session) and test (ck-list-sessions) CK there. Consolekit itself needs to be running, the 'xdm' init script should start consolekit if it's set up properly - you should see console-kit-daemon running in your process list.

You can use

# equery uses xdm

to check if xdm has consolekit enabled for Gentoo. Xfce appears to autodetect the availability of Consolekit sessions and does not require rebuild to use it.

My regular user account, though I do belong to 'wheel', does not have any other system groups to access audio, shutdown, or removable media on my xfce machines.
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catchpole · Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2015 5:59 am Post subject:

Hi eccerr0r,

I had an error on boot up with xdm.

eccerr0r · Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2015 2:24 pm Post subject:

Shutdown and Reboot should always be available if Consolekit is enabled with xfce - but hibernate and suspend depend on kernel setup. (Apologies, typoed "hibernate/shutdown" instead of "hibernate/suspend". Also having hibernate/suspend on a desktop isn't completely useless, though personally I rather shutdown as my systems are fast enough on startup. It's kind of a pity that machines' firmware finally work for suspend/resume once I got ssds...)

As the error message says, you should look at the file /etc/conf.d/xdm - Edit it and make sure it has DISPLAYMANAGER="xdm" though it probably does. However the other message indicates /usr/bin/xdm doesn't exist indicating you unmerged it, which makes sense.

The display manager presents you with the graphical login screen. If you get the graphical login screen, xdm is working and will set up your consolekit session automatically.

On the other hand if you don't want the graphical login screen and rather use the getty/login console method, you still need consolekit for xfce power buttons. As in that page I linked, you need to start a consolekit session so I won't repeat that here. Either way you need consolekit running before you can start a consolekit session:

# rc-update add consolekit default

And to manually start it without reboot: /etc/init.d/consolekit start (or rc-service consolekit start)

You don't need to add this if you use xdm as xdm's initscript will do this for you automatically if it starts up correctly.
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catchpole · Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2015 5:48 am Post subject:

Hi eccerr0r,

I have re-emerged xdm.
The file "/etc/conf.d/xdm" has DISPLAYMANAGER="xdm" in it. (uncommented)

When I re-boot I get a login window which I believe to be "consolekit" because of the icon at the right hand side which seems to represent a "K".
The Header for this window says "Welcome to GentooBox"

Also below that in the bottom right hand corner of the screen is a basic white window which says:

eccerr0r · Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2015 8:49 am Post subject:

xdm seemed to work fine for me, I've not really liked SLiM because it doesn't seem to select sessions automatically properly, but when it does, it works with consolekit fine. Recently I've simply used LightDM which works very well. I even use it with one of my Gnome boxes over gdm because it doesn't crash fglrx.

Consolekit has no GUI actually, it works completely behind the scenes. What you're seeing is the old fashioned xdm login screen. The lower right hand corner is just an 'xconsole' that tries to display all console messages to help debug (but it's simply crap IMHO, it does not work well for Linux - it was more designed for old Unix that does not have virtual terminals.)

I think you may have run across one of the problems with Gentoo - sometimes after merging and unmerging packages, configuration sometimes is not restored back to what it was before. Try merging xfce again and etc-update/dispatch-conf, hopefully it will set up the display manager properly, there's a whole bunch of scripts dealing with Xsession and Chooser that I haven't totally figured out myself (as xdm, SLiM, LightDM, gdm, and others all do something slightly different...)
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catchpole · Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2015 1:06 pm Post subject:

I've managed to get the login screen to let me login at last.

It was merely trial and error.
I went back to the xfce "How To" and under the heading "Graphical Login" I entered the suggested commands: