user can't set desktop background in Cinnamon

[Indi008]

I have set up a fresh gentoo system with cinnamon and have been following the steps on the wiki.
I have a working desktop for root and have set up a user but currently the user is unable to do some actions. For example the user can not set the desktop background, power off without using sudo, and themes only partially display.
When the user tries to set the background the images can be clicked on but the desktop background just stays black.
The user is in the wheel group and I have a file in /etc/polkit-1/rules.d named 55-allowing-all-actions.rules containing the following:

polkit.addRule (function (action, subject)
{
if (subject.isInGroup ("wheel"))
{
return polkit.Result.YES;
}
});

I am using xorg and elogind.

How do I allow the user to set a desktop background?

[Jaglover]

There are two most stupid things a *nix user can do. Using the computer as root and running X as root.
Furthermore, if you need help then you need to post the errors you are getting.
Since you are abusing root account I can guess there may be some config files in your home directory belonging to root, thus your user cannot change them. Solution: run chown recursively on your home directory.
_________________
My Gentoo installation notes.
Please learn how to denote units correctly!

[Indi008]

I'm not using root. I just tried it as root to see if it was a problem specific to the user vs system wide problem. That is the whole point of this, that I am trying to make the user account work. When I was getting xorg set up and debugging problems all the advice I found online said to try x-server for root to narrow down the problem scope.
And it doesn't give me any errors, it just gives the behavior.
I have now given chown a go but it hasn't changed the behavior and the user seems to already own everything in home directory.

ls -l command gives:

[Indi008]

update with more info:

if I run 'cinnamon-settings Backgrounds' it opens the Backgrounds window and gives following output:

True
Using PAM module (python3-pam)
Could not find wacom module; is the cinnamon-control-center package installed?
Loading Backgrounds module


Same for if I replace 'Backgrounds' with 'themes' and run the command again.


But I do have cinnamon-control-center package installed. I am wondering if there is a missing link somewhere, that maybe it is looking for things in one place but they are in a different place? I'm not sure how to tell where it is looking for the package yet but I'll have a look later today.

[Indi008]

Update:
So I'm still not sure how to tell where it is looking for the cinnamon-control-center package but since the same message occurs for root but root can set desktop background and themes I don't think that's the problem.

When I originally got the desktop running for user I had to give the X server permissions to use the input devices by changing the file ownership and permissions of /usr/bin/Xorg as per Non_root_Xorg wiki alternative method.

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Non_root_Xorg

Is it possible there is something else that needs the same sort of thing done?

[Indi008]

update:

I've made a second user and second user has the same problems as first user.

[Indi008]

Update:

I fixed it. Turns out I was missing the .xinitrc file.