Hi Mantas, Thank you very much for your reply. Since you're fairly certain that run0/systemd-run is the component that is timing out, do you know if there's a way to configure run0/systemd-run to wait longer for the password? If there's no way to configure a longer timeout (I really hope there is), do you think it would be possible for a developer to create a patch for my copy of run0/systemd-run?
Please note: I am a user, not a developer and I do not have the skills to write a patch for run0/systemd-run myself, but I'm more than happy to pay for a developer's time while they work on a patch. Many thanks, Steven On Wed, Aug 19, 2026 at 4:55 AM Mantas Mikulėnas <[email protected]> wrote: > > My first guess is "none of the above" but rather the client program (run0 in > this case) that has sent off the method_call and was waiting for reply. > > Polkit prompting is invisible to the client – even if the actual prompter has > been spawned directly by run0 as a child process, run0 doesn't control it > directly. Instead systemd receives the initial method_call and "in > background" sends off another call to polkitd, which then either > approves/rejects directly or triggers an interactive auth prompt. During the > prompt, run0 just sits there waiting for the "StartUnit" call to do something. > > It *could* also potentially be systemd timing out waiting for a response from > polkitd – I'm pretty sure it's not going to be polkitd timing out waiting for > a response from the agent/prompter – but run0/systemd-run is generally the > first place I'd check based on how the error message looks. > > I think programs that make calls potentially triggering interactive polkit > auth generally have *much* longer timeouts than a minute. Not sure if > infinite, but e.g. polkit's own `pkexec` seems to be happy to wait until my > screensaver kicks in. > > On Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 19:29 Steven Mulvay <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Hi All, >> >> When I'm trying to authenticate for a systemd-related function (run0 >> for example) and it times-out while waiting for the password, is it >> likely to be: systemd timing out, dbus timing out, or polkit timing >> out? Note that when it times out, I get the following error: >> >> Failed to start transient service unit: Method call timed out >> >> The reason I want to know which component is timing out, is because >> I'd like to extend the timeout to at least 60 seconds if possible. I >> am a very slow typist due to a physical disability. >> >> Many thanks, >> Steven_M
