F12 - Can't configure services over a VNC connection

[KC8LDO]

Does anybody check to see if the configurations work when running these new 
distros on a head less box? I had problems with F10 being unstable on a P4 
box, don't know if its a hardware or software issue. Started getting weird 
messages about missing python modules, and other python errors, while trying 
to run yum, some apps failed to work, couldn't even log in as root a few 
times. It all started after one kernel update a while back and noticed some 
file system corruption issues, garbage showing up in the folder listings. 
Anyway that's all another story. I gave up on having it screw up so 
installed F12 on the same hardware to see what happens.

After getting F12 going using VNC I tried configuring some services, the 
normal enable - disable - start - stop stuff, using the GUI. It won't let 
you do it. From a directly connected console OK, but not remotely. Same goes 
for the Samba setup GUI too, won't work over a remote VNC connection. It 
doesn't even ask for root privileges when you try to change something like 
what happens with the directly connected console. I had to install the menu 
editor app and manually change those two to open in a terminal window using 
the (su -c "xxxxx") work around on the command line entry.

I've only had this version, F12, installed for the passed few hours and I'm 
already finding simple stuff that doesn't work. I had similar experiences 
with F10 as well. So the problem has been around for a while. Are these 
simple PAM errors / miss configurations or what? I would think this would be 
simple enough to fix and have it stay that way.