After years of my old desktop computer being unable to suspend to RAM or disk, it was a pleasant surprise to find that my Linux system could do it on this laptop. However, there seems to be a problem initiating suspend within my user account, in the new installation I just made. It's not a problem with the suspend software (e.g. something missing), because I checked the root account and found it's able to suspend; so I think the problem is my user account doesn't have access to suspend. (I also noticed that it currently doesn't have access to restart or shut down, only to log out, further proving this has nothing to do with suspend but is a bigger problem. What do I probably need to change?

Maybe /etc/sudoers needs to be edited?

Since you say root account is OK?

I'd have thought that most user accounts don't have the ability to shutdown, reboot or suspend a system. Just imagine what could happen if a Linux system with 100 users had one of them reboot the system at some inopportune moment. The ability to change a machine's run state should always be limited to root. Linux wasn't designed as a one-person OS, it's multiuser.

my

Play Bonny!

I suspect you are not a member of the power group?

Would be interesting to know something about your system, like:
- Which distribution in which version?
- How are you trying to suspend, on CLI or from within a DE? If DE, which one? If CLI, which error messages do you get?

Well, until now I've always been able to shut down from my user account. That's probably because the system knew it didn't have one hundred users. Itt always had only one user--me. I'm running antiX 13, with XFCE, trying to suspend through the battery monitor (by right-clicking the icon in the taskbar). I should try to suspend in a terminal and see what it says.

My stock AntiX 11 Base Sid Install /etc/sudoers file that allows

I can reboot also. Suspend is not a issue because this is a Desktop computer.
From the sounds of it. You have a XFCE battery monitor issue though.

My Wife is running Xfce (well, she really has no clue whet she is running and I keep her box updated over SSH). However, the X start string in her box is ck-launch-session startxfce4, she has the right to suspend and reboot and shut down.

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I had somewhat similar problems with xfce4-power-manager (I assume that is what you mean with battery monitor) a few days ago, the power manager couldn't suspend the system on idle, telling me that it is not authorized to do so. The culprit was that newer versions of my login manager (I use SLiM, but others do that also now) automatically start a consolekit session at login, but my xinitrc also contained a ck-launch command, so that I ended up with two sessions. The power manager simply tried to acces the wrong session. You may want to have a look into that. You may also get more info what is going on with starting xfce4-power-manager from the commandline with the --debug option. The --dump option also gives you an overview of the permissions and capabilities.

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About the right to shut down when not root: I didn't mention beforehand that I own this computer and the only two user accounts are both mine; but perhaps you could have assumed I wasn't an idiot who thought it was acceptable for one regular user to shut down the computers of many other users.

I have come to expect this attitude every time I post on LQ, and consequently have become more reluctant to post, usually preferring to figure out my own Linux issues or (more often) let them go. Oh, well, at least the person who posted that wasn't rude about it.

I "assume" Post #10 is aimed at me, though I usually find assumptions I make are invariably wrong as in this case.
My assumption was that all Linux/Unix operating systems didn't allow operations such as shutdown, restart, hibernate, etc to be the preserve of root, not user. My experience has been that I have always had to elevate to root privilege to carry out these commands in whatever *nix operating system I have been using. So you see, I've learned something.

If my post offended you I can only apologise, had I read your original one properly I would have noticed the "Beware of the Dog" message in your signature.
Play Bonny!

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In Arch, I know you need to be in the "users" group.

As root, run:

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did you add yourself to the power group?

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