Comments on: sudo NSTasks with Mac OS X’s Security framework

By: bdunagan

bdunagan — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 08:43:38 +0000

@James You can use the System Preferences-style unlock image to avoid multiple password prompts: http://www.bdunagan.com/2009/12/13/system-preferences-pane-lock/.

By: James

James — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 02:05:31 +0000

Thanks for your response Brian. I’ve implemented that as you suggested.
However, I have a small issue that is also present with your BDAuthorize program too:
Clicking a button brings up the password prompt, but you are still able to click the button to bring up multiple password prompts. Do you know of any way around this? I’d like to avoid multiple password prompts if possible!

By: bdunagan

bdunagan — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 16:25:38 +0000

@James [NSTask launchedTaskWithLaunchPath:arguments: returns the NSTask object, and you can check its termination status with [NSTask terminationStatus. However, the task doesn't seem to terminate if you click "Cancel". I'd just keep checking for the dylib's existence and not let the app continue without it.

By: James

James — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 07:45:26 +0000

Hi Brian,
This is fantastic code. Thank you very much for the excellent tutorial.

My application relies on a certain dylib being in /usr/lib. When the application loads, the helperTool performs the sudo cp if the file does not exist. However, the user can still click cancel and the program continues as normal (which will lead to crashes). I would therefore like to make the application quit if the user selects ‘cancel’ at the authorization password screen.

Do you have any ideas as how to do this?

By: bdunagan

bdunagan — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 10:28:27 +0000

@John Ah, good point.

By: John

John — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 10:14:53 +0000

@Gus or anyone else with this issue: drop the ‘sudo’ from the command line you want to execute. It’s redundant as your tool already has super-user privileges.

By: bdunagan

bdunagan — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 05:19:41 +0000

@Gus Not sure about your specific issue, but I know this process works with ‘/bin/launchctl’. Sorry I can’t help more.

By: Gus

Gus — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 23:29:25 +0000

I am having a lot of trouble to execute: sudo launchctl load using this solution.
After I call AuthorizationExecuteWithPrivileges I receive “errAuthorizationSuccess”
But on console I get this:

“sudo: no tty present and no askpass program specified”

If I manually run it on a Terminal and run the program again everything works.

By: bdunagan

bdunagan — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 04:44:46 +0000

@serge I simply used logging to debug any issues that arose, but StackOverflow says gdb from Terminal can do it: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1384284/how-does-one-automatically-attach-a-debugger-to-a-process-at-process-start-on-os.

By: serge

serge — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 20:46:23 +0000

I got your project from svn, it is very helpful. however i have a question, how do you debug AuthHelperTool it is a separate target in the project. Im having a hard time debugging it.