Reboot/shutdown button of xfce4 not working
 

The xfce4 reboot and shut-down buttons are not working. I am able to do these actions from the command line with 'sudo reboot' & 'sudo poweroff' commands. I am working on Arch linux. How can I sort this problem? Thanks for your help.

Maybe this can help: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...om_within_Xfce

Do you mean the Quit panel item does not display the "Logout, Restart, Shutdown, Suspend or Hibernate" dialog -- or that the dialog is displayed and the Restart and Shutdown buttons do not have any effect?

Those are the names on Xfce 4.6.1 on Slackware64 13.1, so may be different on your version of Arch.

If the problem is with the Quit panel item then an easier workaround is Alt+F4 when the desktop is displayed (no other windows open or all other windows minimised).

In response to the queries:

1. The dialog is displayed but clicking Restart and Shutdown buttons does not have any effect.

2. dbus is enabled in the daemons list of rc.conf

3. The .xinitrc file contains: "exec ck-launch-session dbus-launch startxfce4" (without quotes)

4. slim display manager is used

How should I proceed?

Don't know if this is true for Arch, but IIRC in Slackware the user also have to be a member of the power-group.

I am not on that computer right now. I will check and let you know. Another thing is that these buttons were working all right earlier but they have now stopped working. I have been installing some packages from official repository but cannot say after which particular package the problem occurred.

On another computer where I have installed Arch, I am a part of power group but here the buttons are working all right.

I checked and I am a member of power group.

On clicking the log out dialog button on the xfce panel for the first time, the diablog box appears with all buttons: log out, reboot, shut down etc. On clicking any button, the dialog box goes away but nothing happens- no reboot, poweroff etc.

On clicking on the log out dialog button on the xfce panel again, the dialog box does not appear this time, instead a message box appears saying that: "Failed to receive a reply from the session manager. Session manager must be in idle state when requesting a shutdown."

What does this mean?

I also had this problem, and I managed to discover the solution. First, you mentioned that:
And that:
Well it just so happens that SLiM 1.3.3 was released on 2012-02-21! You also mentioned that:
One of the changes in that version, as noted in the Arch wiki, was:
The solution (as you might have guessed) is to remove 'ck-launch-session' from your .xinitrc :).

Also, I'm pretty sure that ConsoleKit will permit you to power off your machine even if you aren't in the power group.

Hopefully this is helpful to anyone else with this problem, who are searching things such as, *ahem*
xfce shutdown restart power off reboot disabled greyed out

Thanks a lot SLiM-xfce-cklaunch. That worked.