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Hello,
Finally I've managed to install the Arch Linux to my computer.
(Despite I had to reinstall the entire Arch Linux twice, it was relatively easy)
Enabling and running NetworkManager system service through "systemctl enable --now NetworkManager.service" works fine until reboot.
(Except WiFi, though: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ne … 2C_etc..29)
As soon as I reboot, system hangs on the "disk unmounting stage" and forcefully rebooting the computer by pressing the Ctrl+Alt+Del seven times results in an imminent EFI system partition corruption - rendering the system unusable.
I couldn't even work around the corruption - fsck.fat / fsck.vfat complains about logical sector size being zero - had to reinstall.
I thought that was a configuration error as what breaks the ESP is forcefully rebooting the computer, not the NetworkManager itself and did the exact same thing - resulting in ESP corruption once again.
After reinstalling the Arch Linux one more time, I didn't enable the NetworkManager and everything was pretty fine except GNOME's network subsystem as NetworkManager is GNOME's native network manager.
Is it possible to use GNOME's network subsystem with another network manager such as systemd-networkd?
I also can't use the "privileged entries" in GNOME Control Center - trying to unlock them fails miserably.
Having a look at system logs reveals it is caused by su - I had locked the root, that it probably what causes the problem.
Is there any way to use su without unlocking the root / sacrificing security or use sudo instead with GNOME/GDM?
Last edited by Agola (2018-08-15 19:46:43)
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Hello, and welcome to forums.
It seems extremely unlikely, that only enabling NetworkManager could cause such issues with boot-up. Are you sure you did nothing else prior to having these issues?
You should try to get logs from the failed boot up in order to diagnose the issue, but the logs are gone if you already reinstalled the system. If your ESP gets corrupted, you don't need to do do complete reinstall. Simply reformatting the partition, and reinstalling and configuring the bootloader from chroot should be enough.
Is it possible to use GNOME's network subsystem with another network manager such as systemd-networkd?
Not really. There could be a shell extension that adds some support for other networking tools, but control center only supports NetworkManager. You can still manage your network with some other tools while using gnome, but you can't configure it using utilites from gnome.
I also can't use the "privileged entries" in GNOME Control Center - trying to unlock them fails miserably.
Having a look at system logs reveals it is caused by su - I had locked the root, that it probably what causes the problem.
Is there any way to use su without unlocking the root / sacrificing security or use sudo instead with GNOME/GDM?
Gnome doesn't use 'su' or 'sudo' to grant permission to non-root users. They are handled by polkit. By default users in the 'wheel' group should have admin privilidges. Regardless, when you're asking for support, you should describe how exactly you disabled the root/su, and post the logs from failed authentication attempt.
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Hello and thanks for your help,
It seems extremely unlikely, that only enabling NetworkManager could cause such issues with boot-up. Are you sure you did nothing else prior to having these issues?
In my case, following the Installation guide, installing GRUB to /boot, creating a user, installing the packages gnome and gnome-extra, enabling gdm.service and NetworkManager.service is enough to reproduce the problem - I did nothing else which can change system configuration at all.
Reformatting ESP and installing grub wouldn't work for me - I had mounted ESP to /boot, as the Linux kernel is in the ESP, reformatting it would also need reinstalling the kernel, reconfiguring it and so on - I thought a "fresh start" would be much better.
I created a new user without adding it to the "wheel" and disabled root login through:
useradd --create-home <user-name-goes-here>
passwd -l rootAnd that is what GNOME and polkit yields in the system log:
polkit-agent-helper-1: pam_unix(polkit-1:auth): authentication failure; logname= tty= ruser=root rhost= user=root
org.gnome.Shell.desktop: polkit-agent-helper-1: pam_authenticate failed: Authentication failureIt looks like polkit tries to use the root to get superuser privileges and fails as I've disabled root login.
Last edited by Agola (2018-08-16 13:17:01)
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In my case, following the Installation guide, installing GRUB to /boot, creating a user, installing the packages gnome and gnome-extra, enabling gdm.service and NetworkManager.service is enough to reproduce the problem - I did nothing else which can change system configuration at all.
And you are able to cleanly reboot the system after doing everything you mentioned, apart from enabling the NetworkManager.service? i.e. you're sure enabling NM resulted in this issue, and not e.g. GDM?
Reformatting ESP and installing grub wouldn't work for me - I had mounted ESP to /boot, as the Linux kernel is in the ESP, reformatting it would also need reinstalling the kernel, reconfiguring it and so on - I thought a "fresh start" would be much better.
Yes, I forgot to mention that if your ESP is /boot, you'd have to also install everything that installs files to /boot, e.g. kernels, intel-ucode etc.
Of course you can do a full reinstall if that's what you prefer. However, it's pretty much impossible to diagnose the issue, unless you can get logs from the failed boot-up, and they get wiped when you format your / partition. If your system is unbootable, you should be able to chroot to your installation and get the logs from there.
If you still want help solving the boot-up issue, please post full journal logs from the failed bootup. In any case, it's probably a good idea to figure out the cause of the issue, as it may be a symptom of some deeper problem.
I created a new user without adding it to the "wheel" and disabled root login through:
useradd --create-home <user-name-goes-here> passwd -l rootAnd that is what GNOME and polkit yields in the system log:
polkit-agent-helper-1: pam_unix(polkit-1:auth): authentication failure; logname= tty= ruser=root rhost= user=root org.gnome.Shell.desktop: polkit-agent-helper-1: pam_authenticate failed: Authentication failureIt looks like polkit tries to use the root to get superuser privileges and fails as I've disabled root login.
Locking the root account has nothing to do with granting permissions with polkit. Your user simply lacks admin privilidges, and you need to configure polkit accordingly. The simplest solution would be adding your user to wheel group, and it will have admin permissions in polkit by the default.
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