Shutdown System Policy Question

[flash243]

Hi,

I've recently updated to version 9.10 and now whenever I attempt to shut the system down, I get an error similar to the following:

"System policy prevents shutting down the system while multiple users are logged in"

I am then prompted to enter my administrator password before I can shut the system down. I am just looking for a way to prevent this and force shut down everytime without the prompt.

Thanks

[hwttdz]

"top -b -n 1|tail -n +8|awk '{print $2}'|sort|uniq"
Will tell you what users are logged in. Do you see a "real user" other than the user you're trying to shut down the computer as. Maybe user with a home directory is a good definition of "real user".

[bobthecheese]

It's not a matter of knowing which users are logged in, so much as ordinary users cannot shut down the computer without knowing the administrators password.

My girlfriend has a standard user account on my machine, and it's taken me a long time to get her to use it rather than my own account. With 9.04 this dialogue box asking for an administrative password to shut down started to show up. It had a way to store this authentication, however, so I could set it up once, and my girlfriend didn't have to think about it.

With 9.10 there's no way to store the authentication. She can't shut down the computer while I'm logged in. If I've gone to work, left the computer on doing something, and she's changed to her account, then she can't shut down the computer.

The question is: Is there a way to either disable this authentication check, or at least go back to being able to store the authentication?

Cheers.

[hwttdz]

You can maybe add that user to a sudoers group that can run the shutdown command without a password. But then she may have to run "sudo shutdown" from the terminal. Granted you could make a shutdown button and put it on the panel that executed sudo shutdown.

[bobthecheese]

She's not particularly computer savvy, so the idea of going into terminal scares her. I could set up something like that, but I deliberately left her out of he sudoer's group, as
1. she'd have no reason to do any administrative tasks,
2. her password is considerably weaker than my own, and
3. I don't want her to be able to accidentally mess up a config somewhere.

I'm trying to find a way to make this less obtrusive without severely affecting my system security.

[hwttdz]

I think (not sure), that you can edit the sudoers file to give her permission to run only the shutdown command, without a password. With a button on the panel this would
1) allow her to shutdown
2) not require terminal
3) not require password
4) not give her ability to screw up system files

[bobthecheese]

OK, I'll look into it more thorougly, and post, if I figure it out.

[flash243]

I tried messing with group settings, etc. But, the easiest workaround I have found for now is to just execute 'sudo shutdown -h now'. That may require me to enter the password, but it's good enough since I expect it in that situation. I'm just trying to avoid the dialog mainly since I don't expect that after pressing shutdown.

Thanks

[seeker5528]

Seems like it should be the display manager and policies related to it that should determine who can shut down the computer using the GUI, it has root level access after all.

My system at work shuts down normally and my system at home gives the message indicated at the beginning of the thread.

I am using KDM at work and GDM at home.

I'll try purging GDM and re-installing tonight or tomorrow to see if that makes a difference.

Later, Seeker

[dcstar]

.........
With 9.10 there's no way to store the authentication. She can't shut down the computer while I'm logged in. If I've gone to work, left the computer on doing something, and she's changed to her account, then she can't shut down the computer.

The question is: Is there a way to either disable this authentication check, or at least go back to being able to store the authentication?

See if you can add an entry into the Keyring Manager: Applications-Accessories-Passwords and Encryption Keys