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)
