Running on Ubuntu 17.10 with kubuntu-staging-ppa, after the last upgrade to plasma-workspace-4:5.12.4-0ubuntu1~ubuntu17.10~ppa2, suspending my laptop now requires administrator privileges (see screenshot). This of course prevents automatic suspension on battery low or lid close. .xsession-errors has this text: powerdevil: Suspend session triggered with QMap(("Explicit", QVariant(bool, true))("Type", QVariant(uint, 1))) org.kde.kcm_keyboard: window type -1 org.kde.kcm_keyboard: window type 0 powerdevil: Suspend session triggered with QMap(("Explicit", QVariant(bool, true))("SkipFade", QVariant(bool, true))("Type", QVariant(uint, 1))) powerdevil: Starting Login1 suspend job Listener adapter polkit_qt_listener_initiate_authentication GSimpleAsyncResult: 0x55871b6336e0 polkit_qt_listener_initiate_authentication callback for 0x55871b607ae0 Initiating authentication Message of action: "Authentication is required for suspending the system." Action description has been found XmbTextListToTextProperty result code -2 XmbTextListToTextProperty result code -2 XmbTextListToTextProperty result code -2 WinId of the dialog is 39845922 39845922 WinId of the shown dialog is 39845922 39845922 Trying again kwin_core: User timestamp, ASN: 14791455 kwin_core: User timestamp, final: 'ID: 39845922 ;WMCLASS: "polkit-kde-authentication-agent-1" : "polkit-kde-authentication-agent-1" ;Caption: "Authentication Required" ' : 14791455 kwin_core: Activation, compared: 'ID: 39845922 ;WMCLASS: "polkit-kde-authentication-agent-1" : "polkit-kde-authentication-agent-1" ;Caption: "Authentication Required" ' : 14791455 : 14904626 : false org.kde.kcm_keyboard: window type 5 REQUEST Request: "Password: " "Password: "
This looks a like a distribution problem in policykit configuration. Please report this issue to your distribution.
I also get authorization dialogs when plugging in USB devices, and reboot command doesn't work either (it just logs out but doesn't reboot) likely for the same reason, so it is indeed not a powerdevil thing and likely a distribution issue. Thanks for responding, I'll open an Ubuntu issue.