Is it possible to interact with systemd system units as non-root user? (Authentication?)

[patrickjane]

I have my program running as non-root user, and I use NewSystemConnectionContext() to create a connection to systemd via dbus. I can query the status of services via GetUnitPropertiesContext(), however when I want to start/stop/restart something via e.g. StartUnitContext() I get the error: "Interactive authentication required."

Of course when working with the CLI one would normally just sudo systemctl start ..., however programmatically this is not possible. Does this library support any means of authentication whatsoever? I could not find any hints regarding this.

I want to avoid running my program as root as this would open up quite a few security issues.