Bug#553672: system-tools-backends: *-admin apps report "You are not allowed access to the system configuration"

[Jody]

Josselin Mouette wrote:
> Le dimanche 01 novembre 2009 à 15:45 -0500, Jody Bruchon a écrit : 
>   
>> Package: system-tools-backends
>> Version: 2.8.2-1
>> Severity: grave
>> Justification: renders package unusable
>>
>> After upgrading from Debian stable "lenny" to testing "squeeze" the
>> *-admin tools from gnome-system-tools always fail to start under the
>> normal user account.  I have tried force-removal and reinstall, as
>> well as reinstalling gksu and other apps to no avail.
>> gnome-network-manager also fails because of this and causes Epiphany
>> to fall into "work offline" mode by default.  I have had this breakage
>> occur on more than one machine with "squeeze" and the only common
>> thread has been manipulating packages.  What little information I can
>> find on this problem indicates that while it manifests most readily in
>> gnome-system-tools failures, this package is apparently the actual
>> source of the problem.
>>     
>
> Please don’t try to second-guess which package is responsible for what,
> just leave that for those who understand how things work. Instead, you
> should explain clearly: 
>       * what you are trying to do; 
>       * what exact actions you are carrying out; 
>       * which of them fail; 
>       * the error messages you are seeing.
>
> Since you also have trouble with network-manager (which has no
> relationship whatsoever to system-tools-backends), it looks more like a
> consolekit problem than anything related to gnome-system-tools. What is
> the output of the "ck-list-sessions" command?
>
>   
There's not anything I am specifically trying to do here, other than 
report a long-standing bug in "testing" which would actually be a 
serious problem for me if I used this same software on a laptop computer 
with wi-fi.  Every amd64 machine I have which I put Debian "squeeze" on 
experiences this exact same problem, regardless of whether I do so via a 
"testing" install CD or an apt-get upgrade from "lenny."  Also, I can 
now confirm the problem yet again, as I trashed my system partition by 
accident (I did something *very* stupid, but it's unrelated to this) 
recently and had to reinstall, this time only installing the most 
minimal base system from an amd64 5.0.2 CD before changing repositories 
to "squeeze" and upgrading everything to "testing."

All of these apps worked properly before switching from "leeny" to 
"squeeze," including the NM applet in GNOME.

This bug is also easily reproduced: simply install "squeeze" (with GNOME 
desktop) amd64 onto any amd64-capable machine and watch (A) 
NetworkManager applet indicate "no network connected" and refuse to 
allow configuration of network devices, and (B) all *-admin apps fail to 
start.  I have managed to work around some of the *-admin apps issue by 
installing gnome-system-tools and system-tools-backends from Debian 
"unstable.  Those versions of gnome-system-tools give me a button to 
press to make changes, which then asks for the root password, and they 
function as expected.  (Workarounds I've found online include adding 
"gksu" to the menu items for these apps, but the upgrade makes that 
unnecessary.)

Unfortunately, network-manager-gnome is the same version in Debian 
unstable.  I can't "upgrade my way out."  The *specific* problem is that 
the NM applet indicates I simply have "no network connections" and shows 
a nice red-and-white "X" on its icon.  Clicking it once brings up a menu 
with a greyed out: "Wired network" and below that "device not managed" 
as well as an apparently functional "VPN Connections" menu which I do 
not use.  Right-clicking has "Enable networking" checked, "Connection 
information" is greyed out, and while I am able to hit "Edit 
connections" I am unable to manipulate the only item in my "wired" tab, 
"ifupdown (eth0)" as the "Edit" or "Delete" buttons are also disabled.  
"Add" exists but I don't think it would fix the problem anyway.  Of 
course, none of the other tabs contain or do anything as this is a wired 
desktop with no other interfaces or dial-up-like connections.

To clarify further, my static IP settings as configured during setup 
have always worked, and I do not actually have connectivity issues.  If 
this was a laptop with a wireless connection, I might be in a bit more 
of a jam, as I could not configure wireless networks either.

Here is the requested command output:

user at host:~ $ ck-list-sessions
Session1:
    unix-user = '1000'
    realname = 'user'
    seat = 'Seat1'
    session-type = ''
    active = TRUE
    x11-display = ':0'
    x11-display-device = '/dev/tty7'
    display-device = ''
    remote-host-name = ''
    is-local = TRUE
    on-since = '2009-11-02T22:52:19.512115Z'
    login-session-id = '4294967295'