[SOLVED] (2) No authentication dialog ..., no 'Leave' dialog

[rolf]

After running an up-to-date Mageia 5 for a bit over a week, this problem(s) has come upon me in the past day or so.

1. If I try to start MCC or gparted from the KDE menu or desktop icon, there is launch feedback but no dialog asking for the root password. I can start the program from a root prompt. This worked previously. I have rebooted numerous times. It reminded me of kdesu so I looked:
   
   

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   [rolf@localhost ~]$ rpm -qa | grep kdesu
lib64kdesu5-4.14.5-1.mga5

   
   so I installed kdesu, which brought 2 dependencies:
   
   

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   lib64kf5su5-5.5.0-1.mga5.x86_64
lib64kf5pty5-5.5.0-1.mga5.x86_64
kdesu-5.5.0-1.mga5.x86_64       

   
   I see no difference.
   
   
2. When I click on the logout icon, choose 'Leave' from the menu, or right-click the desktop and choose 'Leave', there is no dialog. I can 'reboot' or 'halt -p' from cli.

Looking at a similar thread, I tried 'journalctl -b' which gives 'no journal found' as normal user. Root has a journal but I don't know whether there is a clue there. I'll upload .xsession-errors. Thanks.

[rolf]

One more boot and these two issues are gone. I'm not sure this is [SOLVED], I'm afraid more like [INTERMITTENT].

[doktor5000]

Probably the same issue as viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9994

[rolf]

The non-functional logout button and related menu items problem returned and persisted, did not go away after reboots. I think I found the source of the problem to be my habit of leaving the default localhost.localdomain for the machine's hostname at install. Over the years, I've developed a lan with quite a few machines to which I assign static dhcp addresses in order to bookmark them for easy ssh access, e.g. I removed and added the computer's nic configuration in mcc, assigning a custom hostname, and haven't seen the problem since.

Motivation to try this strategy might have come from more than one hit at google and included this one: https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=1 ... 88#p303016

Re: SOLVED Can't shutdown / logout by right-clicking on desk
Tue Feb 25, 2014 3:53 pm


Having "127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost <actual_hostname>" is a good idea but not absolutely required (iirc systemd hostnamectl even auto-sets this)


What *likely* happens on your side is that you're connecting to a router and using dhcp.
Your clients asks for an IP and says its hostname is "localhost". Since the router wants to manage ip/hostname assignment and prevent hostname clashes in the local net (becomes a real issue with netbios or bonjour/zeroconf/avahi) and a clash with the generic "localhost" name (always resolves the local host....) is überlikely, it will send a new hostname (usually derived from the MAC address of the interface, ie. your network/wifi chip/card) and dh[cpd|client] will inform the system about that (you can try calling "hostname" when the issue is present)

Since X11 is rather a network protocol with attached displayserver, it will continue to contact hostname "localhost" (not the generic "localhost" alias) which can no longer be resolved.

No idea whom to blame here, but having hostname in shape before starting *any* network action is a good idea, so you should prevent it from chaning at runtime.
Since dhcp can take some time (so you'd have to wait, blocking boot) the smart way is to claim a hostname where you know you'll get it (and in a real local network you'd want pre-known, speaking and simple hostnames anyway) - usually distros ask for one at installation.

[doktor5000]

Yep, you should always change away from localhost.localdomain. The .localdomain suffix may even be worse,
as that will enable avahi/zeroconf and you get some more automatisms trying to help you with network discovery and auto-configuration ... might be counter-productive in some cases.

[jkerr82508]

There is a Feature request to explicitly ask for the hostname during installation. (Instead of leaving the user to find the option buried in the Summary.) It was not implemented for Mageia 5, but hopefully for Mageia 6.
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Feature:Add_a_step_in_order_to_choose_computer%27s_name_(installation)

Jim

[rolf]

In 15 years, starting with Mandrake 7.1, I've never had an idea about what to do about my desktop's hostname. Having gone through this exercise, I'm starting to assign hostnames to machines on the lan running Mageia and that seems to be straightforward enough in MCC, gives me some help keeping track when more than one ssh session is active.

For someone like me, It would be better to have a little encouragement and example for setting a hostname at install, as well as making it more visible. Thanks.

[rolf]

I'm sorry to be the bearer of sad news but the logout applet et al started not working, again. I tried re-starting X with Ctrl-Alt-Backspace and that got the applet functional, along with a pop-up that ksmserver had crashed. Don't know if there is a relationship but I'm following up on the offer from that pop-up to file a bug at kde.org.

Looking at this, now: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=337667

[rolf]

This problem had faded away and just recently returned. I had just changed from a Radeon video card to nVidia GTX but I don't think that is the root of the problem.

https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthrea ... reboot-etc

That report implicated a file in ~/.kde4/share/config i.e. ksmserverrc

I removed that file but this failure of the "Leave" dialog to appear was not solved. So, I removed that entire config/ directory and it's working, knock on wood!

Since I have been carrying forward my /home directory since nearly if not all the way back to the middle of 2000, I think a need to purge certain files from time to time might be a reasonable thing to try. I have to be judicious as I once deleted all of .kde and found to my dismay that okular stores the data for filled-in pdf forms, there, and I only had limited backups.

Possibly relevant, as I was adding my favorite program icons back to the Desktop, I came across 'killall ksmserver' as the name for one icon that I had created and that command to be what it executed. As a Ctrl-Alt-Backspace Zap of the X-server repeatedly seems to cure the MIA "Leave" dialog, I suspect 'killall ksmserver' might accomplish that, also, and I'll try to remember to try if this happens again. I don't remember the exact workaround I was accomplishing with that command.