PKTTYAGENT(1) pkttyagent PKTTYAGENT(1)
NAME
pkttyagent - Textual authentication helper
SYNOPSIS
pkttyagent [--version] [--help]
pkttyagent [--process { pid | pid,pid-start-time } |
--system-bus-name busname] [--notify-fd fd] [--fallback]
DESCRIPTION
pkttyagent is used to start a textual authentication agent for the
subject specified by either --process or --system-bus-name. If neither
of these options are given, the parent process is used.
To get notified when the authentication agent has been registered
either listen to the Changed D-Bus signal or use --notify-fd to pass
the number of a file descriptor that has been passed to the program.
This file descriptor will then be closed when the authentication agent
has been successfully registered.
If --fallback is used, the textual authentication agent will not
replace an existing authentication agent.
RETURN VALUE
If the authentication agent could not be registered, pkttyagent exits
with an exit code of 127. Diagnostic messages are printed on standard
error.
If one or more of the options passed are malformed, pkttyagent exits
with an exit code of 126. If stdin is a tty, then this manual page is
also shown.
If the authentication agent was successfully registered, pkttyagent
will keep running, interacting with the user as needed. When its
services are no longer needed, the process can be killed.
NOTES
Since process identifiers can be recycled, the caller should always use
pid,pid-start-time when using the --process option. The value of
pid-start-time can be determined by consulting e.g. the proc(5) file
system depending on the operating system. If only pid is passed to the
--process option, then pkttyagent will look up the start time itself
but note that this may be racy.
AUTHOR
Written by David Zeuthen <davidz@redhat.com> with a lot of help from
many others.
BUGS
Please send bug reports to either the distribution or the polkit-devel
mailing list, see the link
http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/polkit-devel on how to
subscribe.
SEE ALSO
polkit(8), pkaction(1), pkcheck(1), pkexec(1)
polkit May 2009 PKTTYAGENT(1)