Unable to reboot/shutdown from Xfce (Debian Testing)

Pirlouis · 2011-10-07 07:50:32

Hi all,

On my Debian testing distro, I am not able to shutdown or reboot my computer. Buttons are disabled/grayed:

PS: I'm using XFCE in french (this is not my screenshot)

I've tryied to create a group called "shutdown" with root and then add my user to this group:

su -
addgroup shutdown
adduser pirlouis shutdown

Then edited my /etc/sudoers:

visudo

I've added the following:

%shutdown ALL=NOPASSWD:/usr/lib/xfce4/session/xfsm-shutdown-helper

After reboot (shutdown -r now), buttons remained grayed.

Can you help me please ?

Thank you.

Last edited by Pirlouis (2011-10-07 07:51:07)

RobtWB · 2011-10-09 00:33:03

I had a similar problem when I was using Enlightenment, I could log out but all other options were grayed out. Found out for some reason gnome-session-manager was starting at login and taking precedence over Enlightenment's session. If you have a process viewer like Gnome System Monitor or one of the others, I'd suggest using it to see if there's another session manager running, and killing it. If there is, after you kill the process but BEFORE you log out or shut down, go to your XFCE Settings Manager and check your Session and Startup settings. Hopefully the other session manager is listed there, and you can just click it off or delete it altogether. If it isn't, you're going to have to start hunting down what's starting it.
If there isn't another session manager running, the next place I would look is in your display manager settings. Some have an option to override a user's ability to shut down from their session, forcing them to logout to the display manager to do it. It's an option mostly used by kiosks and libraries, places where you don't want users to shut down the computer, but it may have somehow been turned on by accident in your system.

daggoth · 2011-10-10 06:13:14

I recently had a similar problem, when I replaced the gdm3 display manager with the SLiM login manager. Mount, reboot, and shutdown options were all greyed out, and the Network Manager applet didn't work either. But switching back to gdm3 fixed it.

Reading around, it seems that root priviledges for mounting etc. sometimes come from the consoleKit package, which is setup by the display manager. I'm sure there was a way for me to configure SLiM to work with consoleKit, but I was impatient... it was simpler for me to just reinstall gdm3.

So praps your problem is related to that.
(32-bit Debian testing.)

Pirlouis · 2011-10-10 19:21:37

Thanks both of you for your answers.

RobtWB wrote:

I had a similar problem when I was using Enlightenment, I could log out but all other options were grayed out. Found out for some reason gnome-session-manager was starting at login and taking precedence over Enlightenment's session. If you have a process viewer like Gnome System Monitor or one of the others, I'd suggest using it to see if there's another session manager running, and killing it. If there is, after you kill the process but BEFORE you log out or shut down, go to your XFCE Settings Manager and check your Session and Startup settings. Hopefully the other session manager is listed there, and you can just click it off or delete it altogether. If it isn't, you're going to have to start hunting down what's starting it.
If there isn't another session manager running, the next place I would look is in your display manager settings. Some have an option to override a user's ability to shut down from their session, forcing them to logout to the display manager to do it. It's an option mostly used by kiosks and libraries, places where you don't want users to shut down the computer, but it may have somehow been turned on by accident in your system.

I don't have other session-manager. It is a fresh debian install I have with Xfce out of the box.
Here is my Session and sartup settings, for your information (maybe I've missed something):

Where can I find the display manager settings, please ?

daggoth wrote:

I recently had a similar problem, when I replaced the gdm3 display manager with the SLiM login manager. Mount, reboot, and shutdown options were all greyed out, and the Network Manager applet didn't work either. But switching back to gdm3 fixed it.
Reading around, it seems that root priviledges for mounting etc. sometimes come from the consoleKit package, which is setup by the display manager. I'm sure there was a way for me to configure SLiM to work with consoleKit, but I was impatient... it was simpler for me to just reinstall gdm3.
So praps your problem is related to that.
(32-bit Debian testing.)

I also have SLIM as my login manager. It is the first one I use. The first one was the default one from Debian.

angstrom · 2011-10-11 09:59:14

I think the problem come from how SLIM launch the Xfce session. On my Arch linux, here is the content of :

/etc/slim.conf

[...]
# This command is executed after a succesful login.
# you can place the %session and %theme variables
# to handle launching of specific commands in .xinitrc
# depending of chosen session and slim theme
#
# NOTE: if your system does not have bash you need
# to adjust the command according to your preferred shell,
# i.e. for freebsd use:
login_cmd           exec /bin/bash -login ~/.xinitrc %session

[...]

# Available sessions (first one is the default).
# The current chosen session name is replaced in the login_cmd
# above, so your login command can handle different sessions.
# see the xinitrc.sample file shipped with slim sources
sessions            xfce4,icewm,wmaker,blackbox

[...]

And ~/.xinitrc

#!/bin/sh
#
# ~/.xinitrc
#
# Executed by startx (run your window manager from here)

# exec gnome-session
# exec startkde
# exec startxfce4
# ...or the Window Manager of your choice

#exec ck-launch-session startxfce4
exec ck-launch-session dbus-launch xfce4-session

If this work, here some info that may explain why : on the Arch wiki

Last edited by angstrom (2011-10-11 10:06:15)

Pirlouis · 2011-10-11 10:09:44

Thank you; I'll check this tonight and come back to you.

Pirlouis · 2011-10-11 18:51:46

Here are the files I have: /etc/slim.conf

# This command is executed after a succesful login.
# you can place the %session and %theme variables
# to handle launching of specific commands in .xinitrc
# depending of chosen session and slim theme
#
# NOTE: if your system does not have bash you need
# to adjust the command according to your preferred shell,
# i.e. for freebsd use:
# login_cmd exec /bin/sh - ~/.xinitrc %session
login_cmd exec /bin/bash -login /etc/X11/Xsession %session
[...]
# Available sessions (first one is the default).
# The current chosen session name is replaced in the login_cmd
# above, so your login command can handle different sessions.
# see the xinitrc.sample file shipped with slim sources
sessions default,startxfce4,openbox,ion3,icewm,wmaker,blackbox,awesome
[...]

And I don't have ~/.xinitrc file. I've created one with the same content as yours.
Let's reboot and see what happen.

See you in few minutes.

Pirlouis · 2011-10-11 19:01:03

Well, did not work sad

angstrom · 2011-10-11 19:02:45

I hope that you did change in /etc/slim.conf :
login_cmd exec /bin/bash -login /etc/X11/Xsession %session

To :
login_cmd exec /bin/bash -login ~/.xinitrc

Otherwise, creating ~/.xinitrc won't change anything ...

Last edited by angstrom (2011-10-11 19:03:20)

Pirlouis · 2011-10-11 19:13:57

Yep, I Did.
I've copy / paste the line from your slim.conf to mine.

angstrom · 2011-10-11 19:20:57

Last thing : did you have ConsoleKit and Policykit installed properly ? (I don't have Debian so I don't know what are the package's name ...)

Pirlouis · 2011-10-11 19:37:21

They are both installed

pirlouis@debian:~$ sudo aptitude search policykit-1
i A policykit-1 - framework for managing administrative policies and privileges
p policykit-1-doc - documentation for PolicyKit-1
i A policykit-1-gnome - GNOME authentication agent for PolicyKit-1
pirlouis@debian:~$ sudo aptitude search consolekit
i A consolekit - framework for defining and tracking users, sessions and seats

Pirlouis · 2011-10-11 19:41:32

I also would like to know why is there xfce4-session instead of startxfce4 ?
Maybe it is due to different versions, no ?

angstrom · 2011-10-11 20:02:20

As I understand, startxfce4 is a script that start policykit/consolekit then start xfce session ... Take a look inside it for more details.
I'm out of idea, sorry .. Maybe try to change display manager like gdm or kdm as suggested daggoth ... Or ask Debian forum ?

Last edited by angstrom (2011-10-11 20:03:54)

Pirlouis · 2011-10-11 20:10:55

OK, thank you.

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#1 2011-10-07 07:50:32

Unable to reboot/shutdown from Xfce (Debian Testing)

#2 2011-10-09 00:33:03

Re: Unable to reboot/shutdown from Xfce (Debian Testing)

#3 2011-10-10 06:13:14

Re: Unable to reboot/shutdown from Xfce (Debian Testing)

#4 2011-10-10 19:21:37

Re: Unable to reboot/shutdown from Xfce (Debian Testing)

#5 2011-10-11 09:59:14

Re: Unable to reboot/shutdown from Xfce (Debian Testing)

#6 2011-10-11 10:09:44

Re: Unable to reboot/shutdown from Xfce (Debian Testing)

#7 2011-10-11 18:51:46

Re: Unable to reboot/shutdown from Xfce (Debian Testing)

#8 2011-10-11 19:01:03

Re: Unable to reboot/shutdown from Xfce (Debian Testing)

#9 2011-10-11 19:02:45

Re: Unable to reboot/shutdown from Xfce (Debian Testing)

#10 2011-10-11 19:13:57

Re: Unable to reboot/shutdown from Xfce (Debian Testing)

#11 2011-10-11 19:20:57

Re: Unable to reboot/shutdown from Xfce (Debian Testing)

#12 2011-10-11 19:37:21

Re: Unable to reboot/shutdown from Xfce (Debian Testing)

#13 2011-10-11 19:41:32

Re: Unable to reboot/shutdown from Xfce (Debian Testing)

#14 2011-10-11 20:02:20

Re: Unable to reboot/shutdown from Xfce (Debian Testing)

#15 2011-10-11 20:10:55

Re: Unable to reboot/shutdown from Xfce (Debian Testing)

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