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Kubuntuer82
Asked: 2017-11-18 06:08:43 +0800 CST

Collecting user password via GUI in a script

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I know that using the sudo and ssh tools it is possible to use GUI to ask for a password in a script by setting, respectively, the SUDO_ASKPASS and SSH_ASKPASS variables in which we specify a graphical tool to ask a password.

But what if I am using any other tool which may ask for a password, for example ksu which does not seem to support any of the above-mentioned modes? (I searched on internet and I did not find anything like KSU_ASKPASS and ksu does not seem to have any option to support this).

scripts

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I think I have found the solution at the end...

    Suppose, for example, that you want to list the contents of the /root/ folder and in order to do this you need a root access and you can only use the ksu tool (no sudo / su / ssh).

    First, you ask the password using a graphical tool like zenity and you store it in a local variable.

    pw=$(zenity --entry --title="Password needed" --text="Enter password:" --hide-text)

    After that, you can run ls /root/ via ksu by using the following command.

    echo $pw | ksu -e /bin/ls -a /root/

    Explanation:

    • By using echo combined with | you are piping the password to ksu, since it asks for a password via the standard input.

    • After reading the password from the standard input, ksu executes the ls command specified using the -e option, passing /root/ as an argument via the -a option.

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