On Jan 16, 2014 3:23 AM, "Neil Bothwick" <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 15 Jan 2014 16:32:00 -0800, walt wrote:
>
> > > I get this on my desktop but not my laptop. I have tried for ages to
> > > find out why it only fails on the desktop and gave up. Now I just
> > > "chmod +x /usr/libexec/dbus-daemon-launch-helper" and it goes away,
> > > until the next update.
> >
> > Helmut is still using consolekit.  Are you still using consolekit?
>
> Yes, it's the default for kdm so it is enabled on both computers.

I don't think it will be the default for much longer; it's unmaintained
code which sooner or later will start to bitrot. Unless someone steps in
and starts taking care of it.

> > I have no idea if consolekit is relevant here, but Canek has been
> > telling us that consolekit is abandonware and we should stop depending
> > on it.
>
> That's part of the drive to put everything in systemd, which I do not use.

Fact is, nobody is maintaining ck; from its homepage[1]:

"ConsoleKit is currently not actively maintained. The focus has shifted to
the built-in seat/user/session management of Software/systemd called
systemd-logind!"

That message has been there for months; in general ck kinda still works,
although it never really solved the problem of properly tracking user
sessions, which is why everybody involved with it quickly jumped ship to
logind, where the problem is properly solved.

However, as the interfaces in the stack evolves, unmaintained code like ck
will simply stop to work. ConsoleKit uses dbus heavily, and with the
introduction of kdbus[2] and the inevitable changes that will happen to
dbus, combined with nobody taking care of ck, I don't think it will keep
working much longer.

Ubuntu and Debian (now that is seriously discussing which modern init
system to use) have been discussing an alternative, API compatible
implementation of logind, but I don't know if it has got nowhere. I think
that has more future than ck, but again, nobody (AFAIK) has stepped in and
do the heavy coding.

Independently, though, I think is safe to say that ConsoleKit is a dead end.

Regards.

[1] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/ConsoleKit/
[2] http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/580194/a2a05056a657f1bb/