Authentication failed in 2026

[Bastian]

I checked the most recent Announcement posts and searched the forum before posting, but the same topic was dealt with only back in 2023, and the solution from 2023 did not work for me (not a surprise)

Just yesterday I decided to update my Manjaro, KDE Plasma.
System info:
KDE Plasma Version: 6.5.4

KDE Frameworks Version: 6.21.0

Qt Version: 6.10.1

Kernel Version: 6.1.159-1-MANJARO (64-bit)

Graphics Platform: Wayland

Processors: 12 × Intel® Xeon® E-2176M CPU @ 2.70GHz

Memory: 32 GiB of RAM (30.8 GiB usable)

There were more than 800 updates.
Things went well for most of them, but for 24 (BetterBird, CoreImage, Corepaint, Heroic, ZOOM, and some system updates - in total I see 24 not successful) I get a message “Authentication failed” and nothing can be done about it.

mirrors updated, but still things do not work, as they should - first time such a problem

any ideas how to fix it?

[linux-aarhus]

@Bastian

Kernel Version: 6.1.159-1-MANJARO (64-bit)

This is a known issue with the latest polkit.

You will need to use Linux 6.6 or better.

Anything older will not support certain kernel function calls.

I am suggesting you run the most recent kernel

sudo mhwd-kernel linux618 rmc

@Bastian

BetterBird, CoreImage, Corepaint, Heroic, ZOOM

These are custom packages from AUR.

Run

sudo pacman -Syu

Then you can continue to rebuild your custom packages.

@discobot

Prepare the update beforehand

Preparation steps

From [INFO] Stable branch - BIG update BEST practice

If it has been a long time since your last update, you may want to refresh your pacman-keyring before running the actual update.

1. Create a list of custom packages for later reference

pamac list --foreign > ~/alien-pkgs.txt

2. Remove all foreign packages

pamac remove $(pamac list --foreign --quiet)

3. Remove all orphans and other unneeded packages

pamac remove --orphans --unneeded

4. Optional: ensure the keyrings are up-to-date

sudo pacman -Syy manjaro-keyring archlinux-keyring

5. Optional: Run a simulated update

pamac update --dry-run

6. Looking good? Repeat the above without --dry-run

reboot

7. Consult the list of packages created in the first step and rebuild only those you really need

Important Note: Users of Plasma and GNOME may lose their X11 session support. Checkout our guides below before restarting your systems!

Important Note: Users of Pascal, Maxwell, or older cards will fail to load the NVIDIA driver when they were using 580xx series earlier, because the 590xx doesn’t support the older hardware anymore. Only Turing series and newer are still supported.

[scotty65]

@Bastian

Things went well for most of them, but for 24 (BetterBird, CoreImage, Corepaint, Heroic, ZOOM, and some system updates - in total I see 24 not successful)

All of those appear to be AUR packages, so you might be best updating them separately after doing a system update. Because of the polkit authorisation issue, follow the instructions in the post above to install a more recent kernel, reboot into it, and then see if you can update normally via your usual method.

Note though that Heroic is a little unusual, as both the Manjaro repos & the AUR contain a package with the same name: heroic-games-launcher. If that package is installed, make sure you have the version from the repos (v2.18.1-8), not the one in the AUR (v2.18.1-2):

pamac search heroic-games-launcher  
heroic-games-launcher-git  2.18.1.r18.gd827d7053-2                           AUR
    Native GOG, Epic Games and Amazon games launcher for Linux
heroic-games-launcher-electron-git  2.18.1.r57.g645fae05a-1                  AUR
    Native GOG, Epic Games and Amazon games launcher. Development version
    (Git) using system Electron.
heroic-games-launcher-bin  2.18.1-3                                          AUR
    An Open source Launcher for Epic, Amazon and GOG Games
heroic-games-launcher  2.18.1-2                                              AUR
    Native GOG, Epic Games and Amazon games launcher for Linux
heroic-games-launcher  2.18.1-8                                            extra
    Native GOG, Epic Games and Amazon games launcher for Linux

[Bastian]

Great! I did not know that this is a common issue currently.
I used to be more up-to-current-issues, but I am not anymore, and I see that I am very much ‘outdated’.
Big thanx to both of you.
Your explanations are clear and precise.
I understand the nature of the problem now.
I have very clear step-by-step instructions of how to fix the ‘common issue’.