How to make an application ask for root credentials?

English Programming/Scripting
1

Hello there,
I’m writing an application and I would like to make it ask for “root” password when launched from a normal user, just as Yast does. How can it be done?

I’m developing with Qt on KDE.

Thank you for any information.
faina

2

When one calls a program such as Nautilus in KDE, the command is

kdesu nautilus

I don’t code, so I don’t know if that works inside a program, but it works in the shortcut/symbolic link.

3

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Typically easiest to just have it check its UID and then drop out if that
is not 0 (zero) with a message stating to start it again with
su|sudo|gnomesu|kdesu.

Good luck.

faina wrote:
> Hello there,
> I’m writing an application and I would like to make it ask for “root”
> password when launched from a normal user, just as Yast does. How can it
> be done?
>
> I’m developing with Qt on KDE.
>
> Thank you for any information.
> faina
>
>
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4

The most portable way is to use the following in your .desktop entry.


Exec=/usr/bin/xdg-su -c <program>

This should use the appropriate dialog for the desktop environment (otherwise if you use gnomesu, kde users will get an unfamiliar dialog and vice versa).

It looks like there are other solutions, have a look at /usr/share/applications/wireshark.desktop which uses X-KDE-SubstituteUID=true but thats not portable https://features.opensuse.org/307769

5

Thank you everybody!
Max

6

Nice, I was not aware of the xdg-utils until now.

7

I wasn’t either. I am going to play with that when I get home.:wink:

8

This is very useful. In fact, I wanted such a thing in one of my installation program.