How do I get my python program to get the root password ?

[Linuxguy123]

I want to make a python program that I can run as a normal user that
changes the permission on some device files. It will need to ask me for
the root password and then run chown as root in order to do this.

How do I accomplish this (easily) ?

Thanks

 

[Brian Allen Vanderburg II]

The short answer is: you don't accomplish that easily.

The long answer is: you can accomplishity difficultly by using
a pty or the pexect module to execute the su or sudo command.

Check out libsudo. It is a simple library that simply calls sudo
program except it is does all the work of reading/writing the pipes for
you. You could then use ctypes to interface to it. Sudo doesn't use
the root password but the password of the user executing the command,
but there may be a way to make it use the password of the user the
command is executed as instead in /etc/sudoers. I don't really know, I
just have mine set up for my main user account to be able to execute any
command.


Brian Vanderburg II

 

[Aahz]

I want to make a python program that I can run as a normal user that
changes the permission on some device files. It will need to ask me for
the root password and then run chown as root in order to do this.

How do I accomplish this (easily) ?

The easiest -- really -- is to just make it a root script and run it with
sudo. If you're on Ubuntu, that's pretty much the only option (without
resorting to complicated ways of running sudo) -- the standard Ubuntu
setup doesn't have a root password.