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limiting shutdown/reboot permissions
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2026
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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.rulespolkit.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.
@muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works this plus the display manager too if there is one since it runs as root. if you're using gnome, there's a gdm.conf somewhere in /etc where you can disable the power/reboot.