NAME

consolehelper - A wrapper that helps console users run system programs

SYNOPSIS

progname [ options ]

DESCRIPTION

consolehelper is a tool that makes it easy for console users to run system programs, doing authentication via PAM (which can be set up to trust all console users or to ask for a password at the system administrator's discretion). When possible, the authentication is done graphically; otherwise, it is done within the text console from which consolehelper was started.

It is intended to be completely transparent. This means that the user will never run the consolehelper program directly. Instead, programs like /sbin/halt are paired with a link from /usr/bin/halt to /usr/lib/consolehelper/helper. Then when non-root users (specifically, users without /sbin in their path, or /sbin after /usr/bin) call the "halt" program, consolehelper will be invoked to authenticate the action and then invoke /sbin/halt. (consolehelper itself has no priviledges; it calls /usr/lib/consolehelper/priv/auth privileged helper program to do the real work.)

MAKING YOUR PROGRAM MANAGED

consolehelper requires that a PAM configuration for every managed program exist. So to make /sbin/foo or /usr/sbin/foo managed, you need to create a link from /usr/bin/foo to /usr/lib/consolehelper/helper and create the file /etc/pam.d/foo, normally using the pam_console(8) PAM module.

Optional configuration file /etc/security/console.apps/foo could be used to tune consolehelper behaviour. This file usually has the following contents:

RUNAS=root
USER=root
PROGRAM=/usr/sbin/foo
SESSION=true

RUNAS is the user to run the program as (default is root). USER is the user whose authentication information to check (either root or the user invoking consolehelper, default is the latter). PROGRAM is a path to the program (default is to try /sbin/foo and /usr/sbin/foo). SESSION is whether to start the PAM session stack; it usually has to be true; if unsure, leave it that way.

OPTIONS

This program has no command line options of its own; it passes all command line options on to the program it is calling.

BUGS

No known bugs. Report any you find at http://bugs.altlinux.ru/

AUTHOR

Originally written by Michael K. Johnson <johnsonm@redhat.com>