#1027999 xscreensaver: xscreensaver-systemd does not start: "inhibit sleep failed: Permission denied"

Package:
xscreensaver
Source:
xscreensaver
Description:
Screensaver daemon and frontend for X11
Submitter:
Reiner Herrmann
Date:
2023-01-05 20:12:13 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1027999#5
Date:
2023-01-05 19:21:30 UTC
From:
To:
Hi,

I enabled the xscreensaver user service, but noticed that it fails to
start xscreensaver-systemd. In the log I could only find:

Jan 05 19:22:58 hostname xscreensaver[4360]: xscreensaver-systemd: 19:22:58: inhibit sleep failed: Permission denied
Jan 05 19:22:58 hostname xscreensaver[4354]: xscreensaver: 19:22:58: pid 4360: xscreensaver-systemd exited unexpectedly with status 1

Figuring out what was going wrong was a bit difficult. strace didn't
really reveal anything that had been denied. dbus-monitor also didn't
contain anything obvious.

After some time I found out that I need to install polkitd for it to
work properly. After installing it, it automagically worked, my user now
has permissions to start xscreensaver-systemd.

Maybe you can add polkitd to Suggests, or document somewhere that it is
needed for xscreensaver-systemd.

Kind regards,
  Reiner
#1027999#10
Date:
2023-01-05 20:05:13 UTC
From:
To:
What does polkitd do, and why does xscreensaver-systemd fail without it?

I gather it has something to do with "org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1" but I can't tell what that's for either, and xscreensaver-systemd does not explicitly use it.
#1027999#15
Date:
2023-01-05 20:05:13 UTC
From:
To:
What does polkitd do, and why does xscreensaver-systemd fail without it?

I gather it has something to do with "org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1" but I can't tell what that's for either, and xscreensaver-systemd does not explicitly use it.