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Without dbus running, polkitd shows "Connection refused". In your case it says "Permission denied". Anyway, the problem has something to do with dbus.
]]>I can't run systemctl suspend as a normal user:
$ systemctl suspend
Error getting authority: Error initializing authority: Could not connect: Permission denied (g-io-error-quark, 14)
^C
It was pointed out on IRC that polkit is failing to start:
[root@arneb ~]# systemctl start polkit
[root@arneb ~]# systemctl status polkit
polkit.service - Authorization Manager
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/polkit.service; static)
Active: inactive (dead)
Docs: man:polkit(8)
^C
[root@arneb ~]# /usr/lib/polkit-1/polkitd
Successfully changed to user polkitd
Error getting system bus: Could not connect: Permission denied
** (polkitd:16942): WARNING **: Error getting system bus: Could not connect: Permission denied
09:12:49.327: Loading rules from directory /etc/polkit-1/rules.d
09:12:49.327: Loading rules from directory /usr/share/polkit-1/rules.d
09:12:49.328: Finished loading, compiling and executing 1 rules
Entering main event loop
09:12:49.329: Lost the name org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1 - exiting
Shutting down
Exiting with code 0
[root@arneb ~]#