What causes "AUTHENTICATING FOR org.freedesktop.Flatpak.appstream-update" to appear?

Ask Fedora
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1

When I update my OS, I utilise:

#!/usr/bin/env sh
flatpak update -y && sudo dnf5 upgrade -y --refresh --offline && sudo dnf5 offline reboot -y

However, today, when utilising that script, I observed:

==== AUTHENTICATING FOR org.freedesktop.Flatpak.appstream-update ====
Authentication is required to update information about software
Authenticating as: Mr. Roke Julian Lockhart Beedell (RJLB) (RokeJulianLockhart)
Password:

Is this expected? I’d expect it from pkexec or run0 (albeit, as a fallback), but not sudo-1.9.17-6.p2.fc43.

`run0` return[s/ed] "Failed to start transient service unit: Access denied"
2

Flatpak relies on Polkit for certain operations:
flatpak/system-helper/org.freedesktop.Flatpak.policy.in at c324778b0720cb2d01c217fdc70358e232c38b4d · flatpak/flatpak · GitHub

The authentication prompt indicates that Polkit cannot recognize your session as active, possibly because it’s getting the wrong information about it.

Proceed with troubleshooting as suggested in your linked topic.

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3

sudo always asks for authentication when first used unless you have edited /etc/sudoers (using visudo) and made it so your user can use sudo without a password.
This is in /etc/sudoers

## Allows people in group wheel to run all commands
# %wheel	ALL=(ALL)	ALL

## Same thing without a password
%wheel	ALL=(ALL)	NOPASSWD: ALL

The upper one is the default for the wheel group.
The lower one allows users in the wheel group to use sudo with no password.

However it seems that the error you are getting is from flatpak and not sudo.

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4

@vgaetera, this, like t/177866/32, resolved itself after a reboot.