So, out of the blue, software-center stopped asking me for a password. It just runs, and then turns grey. Works fine as root, or with sudo.

While investigating, I found out about polkit (new to me), and looked at the policies, which seem fine. Looking under localauthority, however, showed that while the sub-directories (10-, 20-, 30-, 50-, 90-) are there, there aren't any files under those.

Is that my problem? Should there be a file in the 50-local.d? Or am I still looking in the wrong place for my problem?

I looked for similar questions and looked at the answers, but they don't really help any.

One other thing, I'm not sure it's related but seemed to happen about the same time: The Dash Home only shows items for recent files and downloads. Nothing anywhere else anymore.