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Bug 608367 - gnome-session: WARNING: Unable to restart system: Not Authorized
gnome-session: WARNING: Unable to restart system: Not Authorized
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 585614
Product: gnome-session
Classification: Core
Component: gnome-session
2.28.x
Other Linux
: Normal blocker
: ---
Assigned To: Session Maintainers
Session Maintainers
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2010-01-28 19:26 UTC by Boyd Edmondson
Modified: 2010-03-09 02:35 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Description Boyd Edmondson 2010-01-28 19:26:21 UTC 
In Ubuntu 9.10, when I select "restart" system, the system fails to restart.

This error message is in daemon.log:
  "gnome-session[1910]: WARNING: Unable to restart system: Not Authorized"

Sometimes it will restart, but when it fails to restart it instead goes to the user logon screen.

This prevents me from being able to restart a remote system because the remote desktop (VNC) does not connect to the user logon screen.
Comment 1 Vincent Untz 2010-01-28 19:51:00 UTC 
(In reply to comment #0)
> In Ubuntu 9.10, when I select "restart" system, the system fails to restart.
> 
> This error message is in daemon.log:
>   "gnome-session[1910]: WARNING: Unable to restart system: Not Authorized"

Are you presented with a password prompt when this happens?
Comment 2 Boyd Edmondson 2010-01-28 20:17:24 UTC 
No.  It is at the Gnome user logon screen when I can click on the desired user to log on.
Comment 3 Vincent Untz 2010-03-08 23:41:25 UTC 
Apologies for the delay, I hadn't seen your reply :/

I'm not sure I understand, though: what is at the user logon screen?

Also, are you saying that it "sometimes" happen for VNC users? Or that it sometimes happens, but when it does, it's always for VNC users?
Comment 4 Boyd Edmondson 2010-03-08 23:48:55 UTC 
It is the normal user logon screen.  The same thing you see if you are at the desktop and choose "log off user".

It sometimes happens.  It has nothing to do with VNC users.

The VNC users comment is because VNC users cannot see the logon screen.  If the system fails to restart and instead just goes to the log on screen, then a VNC user can no longer connect to the computer.  Someone at the computer has to manually tell the system to reboot at the log on screen before a VNC user will be able to connect to the computer again.
Comment 5 Vincent Untz 2010-03-09 00:49:23 UTC 
Thanks for the clarification.

So it'd be nice to know why the user is not authorized to restart the system. Is there any chance more than one person was logged in?
Comment 6 Boyd Edmondson 2010-03-09 00:54:17 UTC 
Just one person.  No remote users.

The bug is that sometimes a restart request is denied because of the "user is not authorized" error, which Gnome then probably decides to do a log off instead.

So, I can sit at the computer and select restart.  Sometimes it restarts.  Sometimes it just logs off.  If I look at the error log when it failed to restart and just logged off instead, then I will see "user not authorized".
Comment 7 Vincent Untz 2010-03-09 02:35:16 UTC 
Hrm. In all cases, this will get fixed with bug 585614, since we won't do anything instead of logging out without telling the user in such a case.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 585614 ***