[sudo-users] Using sudo from a GUI app (getting a persistent ticket)

[Todd C. Miller]

When you have tty_tickets enabled you must have a tty in order to
have a timestamp file.  No tty means no timestamp file.  For GUI
programs and non-interactive ssh sessions without the -tt flag there
is no tty and hence no timestamp file is used.

Starting with version 1.8.8 (to be released Monday), sudo will use
a timestamp file based on the parent process ID when no tty is
available.  This provides equivalent functionality when you don't
have a tty.

For older versions of sudo you will need to allocate a pty via
posix_openpt() and friends and run the command with the pty slave
device as the controlling terminal.  Yes, this is a pain.  Alternately,
your application could prompt for the user's password and keep it
in memory, providing it to sudo each time.

 - todd