Re: bug#52904: nmtui - user authorisation

[Mekeor Melire <mekeor@posteo.de>]

2022-01-02 / 12:07 / dev@jpoiret.xyz:

> Hello again,
>> Good morning Josselin, and Happy New Year!
>>
>> Many thanks for taking the time to explain this in detail for us. If I 
>> have properly understood your explanation, it suggests I am running 
>> network-manager from outside of the dbus session. If I look at the 
n>> processes running on my system at this moment, the dbus-launch process 
>> has an id of 881, while the network-manager session has an id of 463, 
>> suggesting that it was started before dbus. My system configuration is 
>> relatively standard (if there is such a thing) - I don't do anything to 
>> change how dbus or network manager are launched, but rely on the 
>> defaults provided by the the desktop-service. Is there any way to ensure 
>> network-manager is launched inside the dbus session? I am using slim 
>> rather than gdm, and as a desktop manager I am using dwm (with some 
>> local changes).
>>
>> Regarding the wheel group - my user is in this group, but I don't get 
>> any request for a password - nmtui simply informs me that I don't have 
>> the necessary authorisation.
>
> Some context is missing from the forwarded mail, so I have no idea what
> script you're trying to run or how, unfortunately.  Here is some more
> information though:
> * there are generally two (or more) dbus daemons running.  One for the
> system bus, launched through Shepherd (named `dbus-system`), and one for
> each session, for the session bus, started either manually or often
> through your DM (ie. GDM).  elogind and NetworkManager both run on the
> system bus.
> * for Polkit to successfully reauthenticate you, it needs to have a
> registered agent running.  A Polkit agent is a program that registers
> with Polkit via dbus, is associated with a session, and is used by
> Polkit to prompt the user for a password.  There are many, see [1].  You
> can test whether the agent is properly set-up by simply running `pkexec
> echo "Hello"`, pkexec being roughly the equivalent of `sudo`, but using
> Polkit for permission checking.
>
> [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Polkit#Authentication_agents

On #guix:libera.chat, I reported Josselin that I had a similar issue as
Paul reported. Namely, I could not use e.g. `nmcli device wifi connect
foo password bar` to connect to a wifi. Instead I got a permission
error.

Josselin suggested me to install polkit-gnome and to keep
~/.guix-profile/libexec/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1 running
afterwards. This worked for me.

(My user is member of the netdev group.)