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After installing Arch Linux, I added a non-root user with sudo privileges and with privileges to shutdown and restart the machine.
Traditionally in Linux systems one creates a non-root user for regular operations. Even in cases where only one person uses the system, having a safeguard against accidentally running dangerous commands as root is nice.
Add a new user with a home directory and bash for a login shell. Set the new user's password. Optionally exit the root session and test logging in as the new user.
useradd -m -s /bin/bash MyUsername passwd MyUsername # Optionally see the new home directory ls /home
Install the sudo package. Edit the sudo configuration file with the special visudo utility per below. Sources recommend doing otherwise, but editing /etc/sudoers directly also seems to work. Add the new user to the wheel group. Optionally test running commands as root by prefixing them with sudo when logged in as the new user.
# Install sudo pacman -S sudo # Uncomment the line "%wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL" EDITOR=vim visudo usermod -a -G wheel MyUsername
For convenience the non-root user should have the ability to shut down and reboot the system. Install the polkit package.
pacman -S polkit
Surprisingly without enabling any service the non-root user now has the ability to use the shutdown and reboot commands. Perhaps they can now run other commands as well. There are certainly many things I still do not understand about polkit.