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guntbert
Asked: 2016-01-10 04:04:02 +0800 CST

What service asks for "Authentication to change own user data"?

  • 772

Related: Seemingly random “Authentication is required to change your own user data”

Every now and then (only after resuming from Suspend) I get the following dialogue.

enter image description here

The information provided is not enough for me to decide what to do (hence I cancel of course :-)
The link in the Details section leads nowhere.

My guess is that there is some program (A) asking some service (B) for permissions.

I want to know how to find out what service/program (B) generates this dialogue (hints about the program (A) requesting the permissions in the first place are welcome too :-))

Ubuntu 15.10

Further investigation spurred by waltinator's answer shows polkitd to possibly be part (B)

Excerpt from journalctl (linebreaks inserted to prevent scrolling)

Jan 10 12:22:04 big polkitd(authority=local)[1157]: Operator of unix-session:c2  
   FAILED to authenticate to gain authorization for action  
   org.freedesktop.accounts.change-own-user-data  
   for system-bus-name::1.68  
   [/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-messages/indicator-messages-service]  
   (owned by unix-user:g)
Jan 10 12:22:04 big dbus[1045]: [system] Rejected send message, 9 matched rules;  
   type="error", sender=":1.4"  
   (uid=0 pid=1117 comm="/usr/lib/accountsservice/accounts-daemon ")  
   interface="(unset)" member="(unset)" error  
   name="org.freedesktop.Accounts.Error.PermissionDenied"  
   requested_reply="0" destination=":1.68"  
   (uid=1000 pid=3973 comm="/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-messages/indic")

Thanks to waltinator's suggestion about xwininfo (which doesn't tell the pid of the window's process) I now found wininfo. So I was able to confirm that the window is created by /usr/lib/policykit-1-gnome/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1.

Now I want a way to ask polkitd/policykit which program requested which action, but that needs a new question.

permissions

2 Answers

  1. xlsclients will help you find out which process owns the popup. From man xlsclients (actually from http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/en/man1/xlsclients.1.html):

    trusty (1) xlsclients.1.gz Provided by: x11-utils_7.7+1_i386 bug

    NAME

       xlsclients - list client applications running on a display

    SYNOPSIS

       xlsclients [-display displayname] [-a] [-l] [-m maxcmdlen]

    DESCRIPTION

       Xlsclients  is  a  utility  for  listing  information  about the client
   applications running on a display.  It may be used to generate  scripts
   representing a snapshot of the user's current session.


NAME

       xlsclients - list client applications running on a display

SYNOPSIS

       xlsclients [-display displayname] [-a] [-l] [-m maxcmdlen]
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  2. This bug has been resolved: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/policykit-1-gnome/+bug/1512002

    You can install the updated package (must enable 'proposed' repo) which modifies the policy:

    /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.accounts.policy
- <allow_any>auth_self</allow_any>
- <allow_inactive>auth_self</allow_inactive>
+ <allow_any>yes</allow_any>
+ <allow_inactive>yes</allow_inactive>

    "Currently, data/org.freedesktop.accounts.policy.in specifies that a user must be active in order to set his own data." -alkisg

    "I can't think of any reason why having a session would be important in this case, so I think changing allow_any to yes should be fine." -mdeslaur

    "This bug was fixed in the package accountsservice - 0.6.40-2ubuntu12" -janitor

    • 1