Cannot enter sleep mode as non-root user (Operation not permitted)

[Ian Smith]

In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 619, Issue 5, Message: 13
On Wed, 13 Apr 2016 22:30:38 -0400 Jason Hunt <jhunt at lynden.on.ca> wrote:

 > When attempting to enter sleep mode as a non-root user, I receive the error:
 > acpiconf: request sleep type (3) failed: Operation not permitted

Correct.

 > Searching online yielded a suggestion that the user must be a member of
 > wheel, however my account is in the wheel and operator groups (confirmed by
 > running /usr/bin/id)

smithi on t23% id -p
uid     smithi
groups  smithi wheel operator staff dialer network vboxusers
smithi on t23% acpiconf -s3
acpiconf: request sleep type (3) failed: Operation not permitted

Being in wheel just means you can su root, and only root can suspend the 
system .. unless you have a suspend button .. or know root's password :)

 > This is happening on my laptop with a fresh install of 10.3-RELEASE, and
 > desktop with March snapshot of -CURRENT.  Both systems properly enter and
 > resume from sleep mode when run as root.

My above snippet is on FreeBSD 8; this is nothing new.

 > Does anyone have suggestions for how to troubleshoot this?

Revise expectations or hack acpiconf.c :)

cheers, Ian