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/shutdown
are paired with a link from /usr/bin/shutdown to /usr/bin/consolehelper. Then
when non-root users (specifically, users without /sbin in their path, or /sbin
after /usr/bin) call the "shutdown" program, consolehelper will be
invoked to authenticate the action and then invoke /sbin/shutdown.
(consolehelper itself has no priviledges; it calls the
userhelper(8)
program do the real work.)
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/bin/consolehelper and create
the file /etc/pam.d/
foo, normally using the
pam_console(8) PAM
module.
OPTIONS¶
This program has no command line options of its own; it passes all command line
options on to the program it is calling.
SEE ALSO¶
userhelper(8)
AUTHOR¶
Michael K. Johnson <johnsonm@redhat.com>