Problems with "Shutdown" and "LogOut" after upgrading to 14.04

Question

I have upgraded from 12.04 to 14.04 on my laptop. The upgrade was successful, but the issue is that nothing happens now when I click on "LogOut", "Shutdown", "Suspend" from the top right power icon (not sure if this is the proper name); "Systems Settings", on the other hand works and launchs the associated window. Not a big issue, though, since I can logout and shutdown from a terminal, but I'd like to know why is this not working and how can it be fixed. Any ideas on how to solve this?

Answer 1

As Sylvain Pineau pointed out, it seems that you this bug affects you.

The best way you can enable shutdown/logout/suspend in the cogwheel menu is disabling starting cairo dock at startup and then manually starting it(you can type "cairo dock on the dash and then click it to start cairo dock).

Another workaround for the moment until the bug gets fixed is using a keyboard shortcut to shutdown. For that open System settings -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts and set a "Custom Shortcut" as follows:

1. Click on +

2. Type "Shut down" ahead of "Name"

3. Type

   dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest=org.freedesktop.login1 /org/freedesktop/login1 "org.freedesktop.login1.Manager.PowerOff" boolean:true 
   

   ahead of "Command" and click "Apply"

4. Click on "disable" in front of the shortcut created and press the keystrokes you want to be set for shutting down, if they are already used, you'll be warned, if not you can use that keystore for shutting down without having to enter the password as you now do using sudo pm-poweroff.

For a list of other commands for rebooting, suspending and hibernating refer to this question:

• What command is executed when shutdown from the graphical menu in 14.04?

You can similarly create shortcuts for other commands.

Answer 2

No need to remove cairo-dock from start-up applications, find cairo-dock.desktop file ~/.config/autostart and add this code,X-GNOME-Autostart-Delay=20

Steps to solve easily (tested in Ubuntu 14.04)

1. run gedit without root
2. click open file menu and press Ctrl+H
3. open file ~/.config/autostart/cairo-dock.desktop
4. add this

X-GNOME-Autostart-Delay=20

1. save and close

2. reboot your unity/gnome

Delay time more than 20 works fine.

soure here

Answer 3

In 14.04, such actions should use /org/freedesktop/login1 provided by systemd-logind. try to reinstall the indicator-session package.

Open a Terminal an type:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get purge indicator-session
sudo apt-get install indicator-session systemd-services

indicator-session roles are described here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SystemMenu

Answer 4

Instead of Removing cairo dock from Startup Applications, you can also change when it starts up... I have found that 60 seconds (on my laptop at least) is sufficient time to allow for the system to start properly prior to starting cairo dock. the following in the Command field will allow for delayed startup.

sh -c "sleep 60; exec cairo-dock -o"

You can play with the sleep time to minimize it based on the speed of your system :)

This allows the system to startup and the shutdown etc options still exist

Answer 5

I saw this problem on different machines after upgrading from 12.04 to 14.04. To fix I had to issue sudo pam-auth-update --force

Relevant bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/policykit-desktop-privileges/+bug/1240336