CONSOLEHELPER - phpMan

CONSOLEHELPER(8) CONSOLEHELPER(8)

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 pro-
grams, 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 con-
sole 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 authenti-
cate the action and then invoke /sbin/shutdown. (consolehelper itself has no priv-
iledges; 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.