[systemd-devel] systemctl as root prompting for username

[Ian Pilcher]

On 4/13/25 2:30 PM, Ian Pilcher wrote:
> I have never seen this before.  After some recent update, systemctl is
> now prompting for a username when I try to start/stop/restart a unit as
> root.
> 
>    # whoami
>    root
>    [root at ampersand systemd]# systemctl restart httpd
>    🔐 Enter Auth Username:
> 
> (It does work when I enter 'root' at the prompt.)
> 
> This is systemd-256.12-1.fc41.x86_64.
> 
> Anyone have any idea what could cause this?
> 

As others have pointed out, this turned out to be an OpenVPN service
that was in a bad state.  (It definitely seems counterintuitive that it
caused this prompt when acting on a totally unrelated service.)

To the best of my recollection, this happened because I updated the
OpenVPN service (dnf update ...) while it was running.  This presumably
caused it to try to restart, prompt for credentials, etc.  From memory,
I didn't particularly care about reestablishing the VPN connection at
the time I performed the update, so I didn't bother providing the
credentials.  This left the OpenVPN service stuck in a failed state, and
also caused the username prompt to show up when working with other
services.

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