Created attachment 2108117 [details]
Photo of error

I am experiencing this immediately after upgrading to Fedora 43. On one dnf upgrade I had to enter the password 20 tiunes.

I got redirected here from https://discourse.gnome.org/t/gnome-software-dialog-blocks-entire-desktop/34593

I have experienced this bug many times as well, currently on Fedora 42, but before that too. However, recently it got worse: on screen unlock (e.g. wake up after S3 sleep), I find my entire desktop locked up by a modal dialog stating “Authentication required to update metadata”. I can click either "Verify" or "Cancel" all I like (they do respond, dialog is not frozen), but nothing happens. The dialog never disappears, and I typically have to kill my GNOME session from another TTY. I typically lose work because of this.

Created attachment 2135816 [details]
output of `journalctl -u polkit.service`

I have attached the output of `journalctl -u polkit.service` for the relevant time period. I've also kept the full /var/log/messages from the entire time window (March 31 - April 1) in case they are needed.

This message is a reminder that Fedora Linux 42 is nearing its end of life.
Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora Linux 42 on 2026-05-13.
It is Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases that are no longer
maintained. At that time this bug will be closed as EOL if it remains open with a
'version' of '42'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, change the 'version' 
to a later Fedora Linux version. Note that the version field may be hidden.
Click the "Show advanced fields" button if you do not see it.

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we were not 
able to fix it before Fedora Linux 42 is end of life. If you would still like 
to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version 
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prior to this bug being closed.

I am experiencing this in Fedora 44 only with Remote Desktop.

Also still experiencing on a regular Fedora 44 workstation

+1 on still happening on F44, with only a single admin account.

There's actually two separate issues here:

* That the prompt is made in the first place

* That the prompt doesn't in any way identify what is making it or why, if there is an issue, and if so how it can be rectified

I found a workaround and documented it here: https://medium.com/@bryonbakeraus/stopping-repeated-admin-password-prompts-in-gnome-software-over-rdp-on-fedora-44-5cf905c2c6cf

TL;DR:

The repeated password prompts in GNOME Software on Fedora 44 were not fundamentally an RDP authentication problem. They were a consequence of a deliberate security distinction:
An active remote GNOME session is not an active local GNOME session. Fedora and upstream desktop components use that distinction when deciding whether routine software-management actions can proceed without additional administrator authentication.

GNOME Remote Login creates a valid, active Wayland desktop session, *** but it has no local seat ***:

Remote=yes
Active=yes
Seat=
That means policies designed as actiove + local do not match it:

The first attempt to remediate the problem addressed PackageKit and worked, but GNOME Software also uses Flatpak. pkcheck exposed the missing Flatpak authorisations directly.

The final solution was therefore not to disable polkit or grant wheel blanket authorisation. It was to add a narrowly scoped site policy that explicitly grants routine PackageKit and Flatpak software-management actions to:

I needed to update polkit to handle the different channel for logging in:

sudo vi /etc/polkit-1/rules.d/49-remote-admin.rules

Paste this content:

// Allow active non-local administrators to perform common software
// management operations from GNOME Remote Desktop/RDP.
//
// Fedora normally permits these operations for active local administrators.
// GNOME RDP sessions are active but are not associated with a local seat.
polkit.addRule(function(action, subject) {
    if ((action.id == "org.freedesktop.packagekit.system-update" ||
         action.id == "org.freedesktop.packagekit.upgrade-system" ||
         action.id == "org.freedesktop.packagekit.package-install" ||
         action.id == "org.freedesktop.packagekit.package-remove" ||
         action.id == "org.freedesktop.packagekit.trigger-offline-update" ||
         action.id == "org.freedesktop.packagekit.trigger-offline-upgrade" ||
         action.id == "org.freedesktop.Flatpak.app-install" ||
         action.id == "org.freedesktop.Flatpak.runtime-install" ||
         action.id == "org.freedesktop.Flatpak.app-update" ||
         action.id == "org.freedesktop.Flatpak.runtime-update" ||
         action.id == "org.freedesktop.Flatpak.app-uninstall" ||
         action.id == "org.freedesktop.Flatpak.runtime-uninstall" ||
         action.id == "org.freedesktop.Flatpak.modify-repo" ||
         action.id == "org.freedesktop.Flatpak.metadata-update" ||
         action.id == "org.freedesktop.Flatpak.appstream-update" ||
         action.id == "org.freedesktop.Flatpak.update-remote") &&
        subject.active == true &&
        subject.local == false &&
        (subject.isInGroup("wheel") || subject.isInGroup("sudo"))) {
        return polkit.Result.YES;
    }
});