POLKITD(8)

📦
version 128 · 4 versions
, in alpine 3.24, arch rolling, fedora 44, nixos 26.05, nixpkgs unstable, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💅 polkitd — the polkit system daemon, but make it a vibe

okay so bestie, gather round, because this page is about polkitd from the polkit manual, section 8 (that's the sysadmin-y section, iykyk), and honestly? she's the most lowkey main character on your whole system. 💖

✨ NAME ✨

polkitd — literally the polkit system daemon. that's her. that's the whole name. iconic. 👑

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

polkitd

no flags, no arguments, no drama. she just is. 🦋

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

okay so here's the tea. polkitd provides the org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1 D-Bus service on the system message bus. no cap. that's her whole job and she does it flawlessly. ✨

and listen — users or administrators should never need to start this daemon themselves. not you, not your admin, not your friend who thinks they know everything. she gets automatically started by dbus-daemon(1) or systemd(1) whenever an application calls into the service. she's like that mutual who just shows up exactly when needed. no invite required. 🫶

polkitd may be configured via the polkitd.conf(5) configuration file. 💅

and here's the cute part: polkitd can be started as the polkitd system user directly, or alternatively it can be started with superuser privileges — in which case it will drop privileges early by switching to that same system user. she does not want the crown. she hands it back. humble queen behaviour. 👑

see the polkit(8) man page for more information. 🍓

💜 AUTHOR 💜

Written by David Zeuthen <davidz@redhat.com> with a lot of help from many others. a real one fr fr. 🌈

🙈 BUGS 🙈

found a bug? please send bug reports to either the distribution or the polkit-devel mailing list. the details live here:

https://github.com/polkit-org/polkit#bugs-and-development

don't be shy, they wanna hear from you. 💖

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

that's the whole page bestie!! go read the see-also list, it's giving required reading. 💅✨

this was the polkit manual, page dated May 2009 (yes she's vintage, she's an era, we love her). 🎀🦋💜

📦 where this page comes from