/pseudo

Authenticate sudo sessions using OS X’s Security dialog

Primary LanguageCMIT LicenseMIT

Pseudo

Authenticate sudo sessions using OS X’s Security dialog

Pseudo uses the OS X Security framework to validate the current user's sudo session. Run pseudo to prompt the user for his or her password using the standard OS X Security dialog. Once authenticated, pseudo will touch the user's session timestamp in /var/db/sudo, granting the user or other programs the ability to invoke sudo without a password for the duration of sudo's timeout period (5 minutes by default).

Installation

make
make install [PREFIX=<prefix>]

Usage

pseudo [-m | --message <message>] [-w | --wait]

  • -m, --message=<message>: Specifies the message to display in the authentication dialog. The default message is "pseudo wants to make changes."

  • -w, --wait: Tells pseudo to wait in the foreground indefinitely, touching the user's session timestamp every 30 seconds. If the session expires during this time, pseudo exits with a non-zero status code.

Examples

Problem: You have a Mac shell script or command-line utility that needs to run a command as root, but the standard sudo prompt looks shady to a novice user.

Solution: Use pseudo to authenticate the sudo session using a standard OS X Security dialog. If it succeeds, invoke sudo with the command you need to run as root.

pseudo && sudo mkdir -p /my/system/directory || echo "canceled" >&2

Problem: You have a Mac shell script or command-line utility that needs to run several commands as root. Some of the commands may take a long time to run—longer than sudo's default timeout period of 5 minutes—but you only want to prompt for a password once.

Solution: Use pseudo to authenticate the sudo session the first time you need to run a command as root. Then fork off pseudo --wait in the background, which will continue to validate the sudo session every 30 seconds while your program runs.

AUTHENTICATED=""
sudo() {
  if [ -z "$AUTHENTICATED" ]; then
    pseudo || {
      echo "canceled" >&2
      exit 1
    }
    AUTHENTICATED=true
    pseudo --wait &
  fi
  /usr/bin/sudo "$@"
}

sudo /long/running/command
sudo /another/long/running/command

License

(The MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2014 Sam Stephenson

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.