Post #4599944 · Elektrine

@muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works

2026-08-18 00:37 UTC

limiting shutdown/reboot permissions I have a fedora workstation pac connected to the living room tv, running some server duties in the house and playing games over streaming and on the tv it is connected to. I want to forbid reboot/shutdown from the UI. I want only sudo in the terminal to be able to do that. I’m no certain of the best way to do that. I cant go just hiding the options on a per UI basis as I’ll be playing whack-a-mole until I’m dead. Instead, Id like things like plasma and steam to understand they aren’t permitted to make that request, but if they try anyway, the OS just ignores them.

Replies (1)

@Ooops@feddit.org 2026-08-18 01:28

I don’t know if Fedora (or plasma) do things differently but the normal default is that you need sudo to reboot/shutdown/etc. Then on basically all distros using systemd this behavior is modified via logind session and polkit. So the first thing to look at would be if a shutdown rule exists in /etc/polkit-1/rules.d/ that allow users in a certain group to shutdown/reboot in the first place. Mine looks like this: /etc/polkit-1/rules.d/50-shutdown.rules polkit.addRule(function(action, subject) { if ((action.id == “shutdown” || action.id == “reboot”) && subject.isInGroup(“wheel”)) { return polkit.Result.YES; } }); So every user in the wheel group can do it without password prompt. Without this UI elements for shutdown/reboot will try assuming they have the right but simply fail.

Open ##4599943