[update] elogind without polkit

teika · Last edited by teika on Thu Sep 08, 2022 1:09 am; edited 3 times in total

[update] The original post below is now obsolete. Today sys-auth/polkit does not any more depend on spidermonkey by default.
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Caveat: I am not recommending this. Use at your own risk. See below for details.

Here's what I have met when I removed sys-auth/polkit (i.e. USE="-policykit" for elogind.)

1. You can't run X without this:
$ chmod 4755 /usr/bin/Xorg
(With USE=+suid, this might be unnecessary. Sorry, haven't checked.)

2. Without polkit, elogind won't let you sleep/hibernate (aka s2ram/s2disk). You can do them with sysfs:
$ # s2disk
$ echo platform > /sys/power/disk && echo disk > /sys/power/state

$ # s2ram
$ echo mem > /sys/power/state

Of course you need the root privilege for these. Write wrapper scripts and run with sudo.
(I guess any command to sleep have them at its core.)

Motivation:
polkit pulls in spidermonkey, and there're many complaints about it:

* Forum thread: Fork Polkit to remove SpiderMonkey dependency (From Jan 2019 to Dec 2020)
* Forum thread: [Solved] How do I switch polkit from spidermonkey to duktape (in Mar 2021)
* Reddit thread: Want to get rid of spidermonkey, but polkit depends on it. (in Jul 2021)

What's wrong with this?
First notice elogind has IUSE="+policykit". Do respect default USE flags. And you should not run X with suid.

Cheers.
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smartding · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 22 Jan 2021 Posts: 129

I disabled the "policykit" flag of elogind long ago, because I don't want to compile spidermonkey.

1. I'm still rootless Xorg according to "ps -fC X", and I didn't chmod anything.

2. I'm still able to sleep with loginctl. Although I never tried hibernating.

Perfect Gentleman · Veteran Joined: 18 May 2014 Posts: 1255

Compile polkit with duktape. Without polkit I've bumped into some restrictions.

teika · Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2022 1:05 am Post subject:

Update, if you're still avoiding polkit, i.e. USE="-policykit".

sys-auth/polkit now depends on duktape, not on spidermonkey, by default. Now you can pull in polkit without hassle.