Hey Jasem,
I was doing this on Lubuntu 16.04. I didn't have log anything, but can next time.
I went ahead and downloaded the files outside of Kstars and manually added them to the proper location.
PK

Robert, many thanks for the explanation. I can see where you're coming from. Basically KAuth works. Once a download is requested a window opens where you have to enter the root password. The download is then started correctly. However, that only works for the smaller files. With larger files KAuth shows an error message that is related to D-Bus. (I've read Jasem was recoding dbus management. Could that fix the problem incidentally?)

Anyway, the error message is
"KAuth returned an error code: 8 Fehler im D-Bus-Hintergrundprogramm: Hilfsanwendung kann nicht kontaktiert werden. Verbindungsfehler: Not connected to D-Bus server. Nachrichten-Fehler:"

To me this suggests it isn't necessarily KAuth that fails but some other programm that is invoked by it and cannot be contacted since either KAuth or the other program is not connected to D-Bus server.

Could the download feature be removed in linux builds (at least stable versions) until all files can be downloaded?

Another suggestion: Have all index files reside in an unrestricted directory and adjust the astrometry configuration accordingly. By doing so we could get rid of KAuth trouble altogether.

Is this on nightly PPA? I increased the DBus timeout to 15mins.. were any of the downloads taking more than that?

What's the significance of adding any time limit? Us living in third world countries may not the luxury of high speed internet. Is there a reason a time limit is needed?

There is no limit in KStars per se. I think it's related to DBUs somehow timing out, so I tried to increase the timeout value. Not even sure if this is the actual problem.

You're saying that kauth is in fact working and that the problem is not with kauth? When I was having this same problem, I changed permissions to /usr/share/astrometry to 777 and the problem went away. I'll try it again and report back.

John

I just ran some quick tests with /usr/share/astrometry permissions at 777 - So far from within ekos/align/options I've been able to download index-4204 through index-4213 and index-4107 through index 4113 with zero problems. In a terminal, nethogs was showing about 2.5 to 3 MB/sec throughput. While typing this, I started index-4203 and its moving along at about 2MB/sec. I allowed it to finish, which it did normally.
I can try these tests with /usr/share/astrometry at its default permissions (755) if that's of interest. Also, If it matters, this is an Ubuntu 16 VM with all the latest patches but not upgraded to 18. 4GB ram and 50gb disk

Yes, nightly and no, downloads don't take more than 15mins. I did a screen recording of what happens...

Can you run "Info Center" and let me know what is the KDE Frameworks Version used?

Did the same thing and with permissions set at 777 the download works flawlessly. KAuth doesn't even ask for a password. Obviously the files are owned by the user then which gives rise to the question why download the index files to /usr/share/astrometry in the first place. If you want to have them owned by the user they should be placed in a directory owned by the user anyway like ~/(.)astrometry

sure...

yeah, on Linux, I think it's a better idea to use a user owned directory since KAuth has so many issues.