Could someone give me a hand, please.
Let me give context:
I stopped updating my system last November as Kernel 6.6.116 broke Grub2 (for some reason after kernel update 116 its initrd image had not been created nor added to grub2, although the system still booted albeit rather slowly).
Yesterday (2 months after I stopped updating my box) Drakconf prevented me from installing new SW unless I updated glibc, which reluctantly I did. I also installed docker (plus several other dependencies) during the update process, but did not reboot as I was also working with Gemini+Antigravity to try out AI-based development (I mention this because Gemini run some scripts as well at the same time, which I suspect may have contributed to the disaster below).
After I rebooted, the system was totally messed up:
1) sound device does not exist anymore (the sound icon on the tray bar says "no output or input devices found").
2) Mageia Control Center does not launch
3) cpupower-gui now complains I don't have permissions to update cpu settings.
After some troubleshooting I found the following:
There seems to be a problem with permissions or polkit as MCC complains I don't have the correct user or permissions (very similar as to what cpupower-gui complains about).
On the same matter, there also seems to be a problem with pulseaudio related to permissions/privileges (when running it manually as root the icon shows a sound device).
All the above makes me suspect that "something" (I don't know what) messed up my system's permission/privileges/policies/etc.
Could someone give a me hand on this? (I really don't want to reinstall my laptop....but I'm completely lost on this)
Here are some details and outputs:
1) I'm currently running Mageia 9, with KDE as my main desktop environment.
2) Kernel 6.6.120
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$ uname -a
Linux localhost 6.6.120-desktop-1.mga9 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Wed Jan 14 01:59:53 UTC 2026 x86_64 GNU/Linux
3) This is Drakconf's error when running it as my regular user (which BTW worked just fine before the update trashed out my system):
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$ drakconf
Too late to run INIT block at /usr/lib64/perl5/vendor_perl/Glib/Object/Introspection.pm line 257.
Error executing command as another user: Not authorized
This incident has been reported.
4) This is Draksound's error when running it as my regular user (which worked just fine before the update trashed out my system):
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The "draksound" program has crashed with the following error:
you must be root to run this program at /usr/lib/libDrakX/common.pm line 596.
Perl's trace:
drakbug::bug_handler() called from /usr/lib/libDrakX/common.pm:596
common::require_root_capability() called from /usr/lib/libDrakX/interactive.pm:103
interactive::vnew() called from /usr/sbin/draksound:30
5) if I run draksound or drakconf using sudo they both launch (but still cannot fix the problems)
6) I tried removing the 9 packages installed yesterday but didn't solve the problem
7) I run a full urpmi --auto-update, including a kernel update to 6.6.120, but that did not solve the problem
8) I re-added my user to my group (just in case)
9) I run msecperms to reset permissions but that did not solve the problem (although it complained about several permissions)
Here's the output:
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$ sudo msecperms
[sudo] password for theo:
INFO: Modified system files: / /etc/ssh/sshd_config /home/theo /root /var/spool/mail
WARNING: Wrong group of /: should be adm
WARNING: Wrong permissions of /etc/ssh/sshd_config: should be 644
WARNING: Wrong permissions of /home/theo: should be 755
WARNING: Wrong permissions of /root: should be 700
WARNING: Wrong permissions of /var/spool/mail: should be 2775
10) I can only get audio back (or at least make the sound icon display a sound device) when I log on as root and run pulseaudio in a terminal.
11) Running Discover with my regular user results in a pop-up window with an error about not being able to obtain authentication
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Error
Failed to obtain authentication
12) It seems any system-level binary (or anything that needs to touch system configs) now requires elevated privileges (i.e., sudo), where no sudo was needed before. As an example, poweroff now fails if run with my regular user. Even shutting down my system from the gui menu does not work anymore, and it results in the Mageia logo waiting endlessly (I switch to a virtual console ctr+alt+F3 and log on as my regular user and sudo poweroff to finally shutdown my laptop)
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$ poweroff
Call to PowerOff failed: Interactive authentication required.
13) I noticed systemd/users is empty.
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[theo@localhost ~]$ grep -i state /run/systemd/users/$(id -u)
grep: /run/systemd/users/1000: No such file or directory
[theo@localhost ~]$ ls -al /run/systemd/users/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 40 Feb 4 12:12 ./
drwxr-xr-x 22 root root 540 Feb 4 12:12 ../
14) polkitd seems to be running (though not sure if running correctly), but I don't see the agent loaded/running
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[theo@localhost ~]$ ps -ef|grep -v grep|grep -iE "polkit|policykit"
polkitd 1707 1 0 12:12 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/polkit-1/polkitd --no-debug
15) Running polkit agent manually results in a critical error
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[theo@localhost ~]$ /usr/libexec/polkit-kde-authentication-agent-1
QStandardPaths: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set, defaulting to '/tmp/runtime-theo'
QStandardPaths: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set, defaulting to '/tmp/runtime-theo'
"Cannot create unix session: No session for pid 8500"
** (process:8500): CRITICAL **: 12:58:56.814: polkit_agent_listener_register_with_options: assertion 'POLKIT_IS_SUBJECT (subject)' failed
"Cannot register authentication agent!"
Couldn't register listener!
16) I also noticed "systemctl --user" fails
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[theo@localhost ~]$ systemctl --user
Failed to list units: Process org.freedesktop.systemd1 exited with status 1
17) It seems "systemctl --user" failure is due to XDG_SESSION_ID being empty
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[theo@localhost ~]$ echo $XDG_SESSION_ID
18) I noticed there are no active sessions. Side note: I wonder if this is the reason for the critical error above (#15)...or perhaps all the way around (#15 being the reason for no active sessions)
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[theo@localhost ~]$ loginctl list-sessions
No sessions.
19) More weird stuff
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[theo@localhost ~]$ loginctl session-status
Could not get properties: Unknown object '/org/freedesktop/login1/session/auto'.
I may be wrong but I strongly suspect a problem with permissions or privileges or polkit, but I don't know how to tackle them.
Any help would be greatly appreciated
