Bug#759745: gdm3: Unable to login post-upgrade without systemd-sysv installed

[Andreas Henriksson]

Hello Lennert Van Alboom!

I suspect that what's being discussed in this bug report is
yet another symptom of the systemd-shim bugs discussed in
#757348 and many more....

On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 11:06:44AM +0200, Lennert Van Alboom wrote:
> Confirmed on gdm3 3.12.2-4. Any outlook on a fix or workaround that doesn't involve replacing my PID 1 with systemd?

A workaround I've used when testing the xfce4 session with
systemd-shim (which also suffers from systemd-shim not setting up
proper policykit authorities) is to manually write a policykit
configuration snippet to give permissions to a specific group.

eg. to give the sudo group members suspend/hibernate authority do:

sudo cat <<EOF>/etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/suspend-hibernate.pkla
/etc/polkit-1> cat ./localauthority/50-local.d/org.freedesktop.upower.pkla
[Suspend/hibernate permissions]
Identity=unix-group:sudo
Action=org.freedesktop.login1.hibernate;org.freedesktop.login1.suspend
ResultAny=yes
ResultInactive=yes
ResultActive=yes
EOF

You probably have to adjust this for whatever policykit authority
is needed in this case... (which might be something else then the
logind suspend/hibernate access.)

I would very much suggest that if you're serious about running
something else then the default init system, you step up and help
out solving the issues they have!
Working around them might give you a warm cozy feeling right now
but if you do that the day when these systems gets removed will
be coming closer and closer and be a harsh wakeup for the people
who are still using them (with their accumulated workarounds).

If the above workaround indeed does work (or not) then your
feedback about it (either way) would be welcome here!

Regards,
Andreas Henriksson