Authentication fails when using Imagewriter

Since you just copy/pasted everything from the possible solutions linked to here:

[Stable Update] 2026-01-04 - Manjaro 26.0, Mesa, Firefox, LibreOffice, COSMIC - #2 by discobot

and the situation did not change,

I strongly suggest you revert the last action:

masking the polkit-agent-helper.socket

Do this by:

sudo rm /etc/systemd/system/polkit-agent-helper.socket

which will remove the symlink to /dev/null that was created by this action


As the explanation says:

Please use this as a temporary or last resort solution if everything else fails as this disables an important component and cannot be officially recommended

As of now, you have done just that, with that command:
disabled this important component

for no good reason
and with no positive effect, without the (presumably) intended effect.

revert that
or it will permanently haunt you