[sudo-workers] Sudo askpass

Nick Hughart mekius_ at satus.net
Tue Jan 29 10:47:13 EST 2008


I'm wondering if anyone has considered an askpass system like is 
available in ssh.  It would help to do two things:

1) Graphical Sudo programs could be replaced with the simple askpass 
programs.
2) Programmers can be more sure of a way to get root access executing 
commands as root as all they will have to do is exec sudo and it will 
determine how to get the password.

I'm not sure why this was never thought of.  I searched the archives and 
couldn't really find anything on this, so figured I'd bring it up.  This 
is really nice for integration purposes in a graphical environment.  
Right now an app has to assume a certain environment and use it's 
methods of achieving root access.  With this, sudo could be used in a 
way that allows any desktop to easily define it's sudo askpass program 
and it will instantly be integrated.  I think at this point in time, 
sudo has really become quite a standard package in most distributions.  
Ubuntu is even using it as the only method of gaining root access.

For reference, I maintain empower which is a graphical sudo and askpass 
program so this is something I'd be personally interested in seeing.

Any thoughts?



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