userhelper - phpMan

USERHELPER(8) USERHELPER(8)

NAME
userhelper - A helper interface to pam.

SYNOPSIS
userhelper [ -t ] [ -w prog args ] [ -c ] [ -f full-name ] [ -o office ]
[ -p office-phone ] [ -h home-phone ] [ -s shell ] [ username ]

DESCRIPTION
NOTE this program is NOT intended to be run interactively. If you want to change
this information on the command line use passwd(1), chfn(1), or chsh(1).

This program provides a basic interface to change a user’s password, gecos informa-
tion, and shell. The main differnce between this program and its traditional
equivilents is that prompts are written to standard out to make it easy for a GUI
wrapper to interface to it as a child process.

The output is in the form of:

Where the number is the type of prompt returned from pamlib, and the string is the
prompt to give the user.

The prompt numbers are as follows:

1 Prompt with visible input.

2 Prompt with invisible input.

3 Suggested answer for the current prompt.

4 Informational message.

5 Error message.

6 Count of messages sent in this block so far.

7 The name of the service being used.

8 Whether or not the command will be executed as the user if authentication
fails.

9 The name of the user being authenticated.

OPTIONS
-t Use text mode authentication instead of the numbered message types just
described; only used with -w.

-w Specify a program name to be run and arguments to be passed to it. user-
helper will look in the file /etc/security/console.apps/programname for the
name of a user to authenticate, the path of the binary to be run, and other
settings described below. userhelper will then attempt to authenticate the
user using PAM, specifying programname as the PAM service name. If authen-
tication succeeds, the binary will be run with superuser privileges. If the
configuration file specifies that PAM session management should be per-
formed, userhelper will also open a PAM session before starting the program,
and close the session when the program terminates. If authentication fails,
userhelper can be configured run the program with the user’s privileges
instead.

-c Change the current user’s password. Note that this option cannot be used
with any of the other options. This is due to the limitation in the inter-
face to pamlib.

-f Specify a new Full Name.

-o Specify a new Office.

-p Specify a new Office Phone.

-h Specify a new Home Phone.

-s Specify a new shell.

VARIABLES
USER The name of the user userhelper should attempt to authenticate the invoking
user as. Typically this is root. The special value <user> (which is also
the default) indicates that userhelper should authenticate the invoking
user.

The special value <none> indicates that access should be denied; when used
in conjunction with UGROUPS, members of the given groups can authenticate
but all others are given an Insufficient Rights message.

UGROUPS
A comma-separated list of groups whose members will be authenticated as if
USER were set to the special value <user>. If the invoking user is not a
member of one of these groups, the name defined in USER will be used as nor-
mal. For example, setting UGROUPS to wheel and USER to root allows members
of wheel (traditionally used for administrative privileges) to authenticate
with their own credentials and requires other users to provide the root
password.

PROGRAM
The name of the binary to execute if authentication succeeds. This should
always be specified as an absolute path. If not specified, userhelper will
attempt to run /sbin/programname first, and failing that, it will attempt to
run /usr/sbin/programname.

SESSION
Specifies whether or not userhelper should perform PAM session management
when running the program. Typically this is needed if the PAM configuration
uses a module such as pam_xauth.so to forward X11 authentication tokens for
use by the program. Valid values are yes and no, with the default being no.

RETRY Specifies the number of times userhelper should attempt to authenticate the
user if the initial attempt fails. The default value is 2, which causes
userhelper to attempt to authenticate the user a total of 3 times.

FALLBACK
Specifies whether or not the specified binary should be run with the invok-
ing user’s privileges if authentication fails. This option is useful for
running applications which gain additional abilities when run with superuser
privileges, but which are still useful when run without them.

NOXOPTION
The name of an option which, if passed to userhelper as an argument for the
program it will run, will cause userhelper to behave as if the -t flag had
been passed to it.

GUI Specifies whether or not userhelper should use consolehelper to present
graphical dialog boxes when prompting the user for information. This is the
inverse of the -t option. Valid values are yes and no, with the default
being yes.

BANNER Specifies specific text which userhelper should present to the user when
userhelper prompts for information. The default is a generic message based
on the PAM service name.

BANNER_DOMAIN
Specifies the text domain in which translations of the banner are stored.
This setting is deprecated in favor of the DOMAIN setting.

DOMAIN Specifies the text domain in which translations of strings are stored. If
this setting is specified, it overrides any setting for BANNER_DOMAIN which
may also be set.

STARTUP_NOTIFICATION_NAME
Specifies the startup notification name used for startup notification.

STARTUP_NOTIFICATION_DESCRIPTION
Specifies the startup notification name used for startup notification.

STARTUP_NOTIFICATION_WORKSPACE
Specifies the startup notification workspace used for startup notification.

STARTUP_NOTIFICATION_WMCLASS
Specifies the startup notification binary wmclass used for startup notifica-
tion.

STARTUP_NOTIFICATION_BINARY_NAME
Specifies the startup notification binary name used for startup notifica-
tion.

STARTUP_NOTIFICATION_ICON_NAME
Specifies the startup notification icon name used for startup notification.

EXIT STATUS
A non-zero exit status indicates an error occured. Those errors are:

1 The authentication passwords was incorrect.

2 One or more of the GECOS fields is invalid. This occurs when there is a
colon supplied in one of the fields.

3 Password resetting error.

4 Some system files are locked.

5 User unknown.

6 Insufficent rights.

7 Invalid call to this program.

8 The shell provided is not valid (i.e., does not exist in /etc/shells).

9 Ran out of memory.

10 Could not find the program.

11 exec failed even though program exists.

12 the user canceled the operation.

255 Unknown error.

FILES
/etc/passwd The gecos and shell information is stored in this file.

/etc/shells This file is checked to see if the new shell supplied is
valid.

/etc/security/console.apps/prog
This file contains the values which will be used for the
variables when userhelper is used with the -w flag.

/etc/pam.d/prog This file contains the PAM configuration used when user-
helper is used with the -w flag.

SEE ALSO
userpasswd(1), userinfo(1), consolehelper(8), chfn(1), chsh(1), passwd(5)

AUTHOR
Otto Hammersmith <otto AT redhat.com>
Michael K. Johnson <johnsonm AT redhat.com>

Red Hat, Inc. 18 February 2003 USERHELPER(8)

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