NAME

       consolehelper - A wrapper that helps console users run system programs

SYNOPSIS

       progname [ options ]

DESCRIPTION

       consolehelper is a tool that makes it easy for console users to run system programs, doing authentication
       via  PAM  (which  can  be  set  up  to  trust  all  console  users or to ask for a password at the system
       administrator's discretion).  When possible, the authentication is done  graphically;  otherwise,  it  is
       done within the text console from which consolehelper was started.

       It  is  intended to be completely transparent.  This means that the user will never run the consolehelper
       program directly.  Instead, programs like /sbin/shutdown are paired with a link from /usr/bin/shutdown to
       /usr/bin/consolehelper.  Then when non-root users (specifically, users without /sbin in  their  path,  or
       /sbin  after  /usr/bin)  call  the  "shutdown" program, consolehelper will be invoked to authenticate the
       action and  then  invoke  /sbin/shutdown.   (consolehelper  itself  has  no  priviledges;  it  calls  the
       userhelper(8) program do the real work.)

       consolehelper requires that a PAM configuration for every managed program exist.  So to make /sbin/foo or
       /usr/sbin/foo  managed,  you need to create a link from /usr/bin/foo to /usr/bin/consolehelper and create
       the file /etc/pam.d/foo, normally using the pam_console(8) PAM module.

OPTIONS

       This program has no command line options of its own; it passes all command line options on to the program
       it is calling.

SEE ALSO

       userhelper(8)

AUTHOR

       Michael K. Johnson <johnsonm@redhat.com>

Red Hat Software                                  18 March 1999                                 CONSOLEHELPER(8)