xfce: unable to perform shutdown

[Liviu Andronic]

On 1/4/10, José Romildo Malaquias <j.romildo at gmail.com> wrote:
>  When shutting down my ~amd64 gentoo system running XFCE, the system
>  does not shut down and I receive the following error message, and then
>  the XFCE session is closed.
>
>  Unable to perform shutdown
>  error: org.freedesktop.Hal.Error: Could not determine whether caller
>  is privileged
>  org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Error
>
>  Any clues?
>
Yes. Something similar is happening on amd64 Debian systems (see
[1][2]). The only workaround that I'm aware of sofar is to make sure
no root programs are running when hitting the shutdown/restart button.
Liviu

[1] http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-xfce-devel/2009-April/008492.html
[2] http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-user@lists.debian.org/msg553778.html