rebooting from panel menu

[Jonathan Kamens]

For a long time, there was no "Shut Down..." on the GNOME panel menu.

Then it came back, but it didn't do anything when I selected it and 
clicked "Reboot".

I found errors in my .xsession-errors file indicating that 
gnome-power-manager wasn't running, so I started it.

After starting it and doing Shut Down... > Reboot again, there was no 
longer an error in .xsession-errors, but reboot still didn't happen.

Tried "gnome-power-cmd.sh reboot" and got this:

Rebooting
Error org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.PermissionDeniedByPolicy: 
org.freedesktop.hal.power-management.reboot no <-- (action, result)

I can't find any menu item that I looks like the one I can use to run a 
program to modify the referenced policy, nor can I find any 
documentation on the officially correct way to do this.

Not sure how much of the trouble I'm having can be classified as bugs 
and how much can be classified as user ignorance, but it does seem like 
a bug that when I actively look for how to solve this problem, I can't 
find anything pointing me at the solution.

Any advice?

Thanks,

  jik