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itsadok
Asked: 2014-12-17 21:14:14 +0800 CST

Seemingly random "Authentication is required to change your own user data"

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Ever since I upgraded to 14.10 I get a strange behavior on my desktop. I get popups claiming "Authentication is required to change your own user data" and a prompt for my password. It happens at random times, though it seems to get triggered by my actions. For example, it happens every time I switch keyboard layouts, but only after I've been working for a while. Sometimes it pops up several times in a row.

Hitting "Cancel" doesn't seem to cause any problems.

Clicking "Details" on the authentication dialog reveals Action: org.freedesktop.accounts.change-own-user-data and Vendor:.

I looked at /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.accounts.policy, and under the change-own-user-data action, the settings are:

<defaults>
  <allow_any>auth_self</allow_any>
  <allow_inactive>auth_self</allow_inactive>
  <allow_active>yes</allow_active>
</defaults>

I don't have any interesting files under /etc/polkit-1.

My laptop has a very similar setup (14.10, same policy files) but the problem does not exist there.

Is there a way to find what is triggering those popups, or better yet, just get rid of them?

policykit

4 Answers

  1. Have you tried to rewrite the permissions to your home directory? open terminal:

    cd /home/
chown -R your-account-name your-account-name
    • 3

  2. This looks very much like a confirmed bug: Annoying dialog "Authentication is required to change your own user data"

    As of now there exist workarounds (partly mentioned in other answers to this question) but neither the exact cause nor a real solution is known.

    Instead of changing a system policy in a way where I don't know potential side effects I opted to live with the dialogue for now. Of course I don't want to authorize an unknown action, so the quickest way to deal with it is

    • select the dialogue (so that is has the focus)
    • press ESC until the last of the dialogues is closed.
    • 3

  3. This worked for me:

    1) At Settings -> Session and Startup ( Application Autostart TAB )

    Session and Startup

    Uncheck PolicyKit Authentication Agent

    ( /usr/lib/policykit-1-gnome/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1 )

    2) In a Terminal:

    sudo killall polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1

    My Desktop was running:

    • Distributor ID: Ubuntu
    • Description: Ubuntu Wily Werewolf (development branch)
    • Release: 15.10
    • Codename: wily
    • 2

  4. Changing the org.freedesktop.accounts.change-own-user-data policy from auth_self to yes will fix this:

    $ printf '[Do not prompt users with "Authentication is required to change your own user data" messages]\nIdentity=unix-user:*\nAction=org.freedesktop.accounts.change-own-user-data\nResultAny=yes\nResultInactive=yes\n' | sudo tee /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/org.freedesktop.accounts.change-own-user-data.pkla
[Do not prompt users with "Authentication is required to change your own user data" messages]
Identity=unix-user:*
Action=org.freedesktop.accounts.change-own-user-data
ResultAny=yes
ResultInactive=yes
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