How would I go about getting a privilege elevation dialog to pop up in my Python app? I want the UAC dialog on Windows and the password authentication dialog on Mac.
Basically, I need root privileges for part of my application and I need to get those privileges through the GUI. I'm using wxPython. Any ideas?
I know the post is a little old, but I wrote the following as a solution to my problem (running a python script as root on both Linux and OS X).
I wrote the following bash-script to execute bash/python scripts with administrator privileges (works on Linux and OS X systems):
#!/bin/bash
if [ -z "$1" ]; then
echo "Specify executable"
exit 1
fi
EXE=$1
available(){
which $1 >/dev/null 2>&1
}
platform=`uname`
if [ "$platform" == "Darwin" ]; then
MESSAGE="Please run $1 as root with sudo or install osascript (should be installed by default)"
else
MESSAGE="Please run $1 as root with sudo or install gksu / kdesudo!"
fi
if [ `whoami` != "root" ]; then
if [ "$platform" == "Darwin" ]; then
# Apple
if available osascript
then
SUDO=`which osascript`
fi
else # assume Linux
# choose either gksudo or kdesudo
# if both are avilable check whoch desktop is running
if available gksudo
then
SUDO=`which gksudo`
fi
if available kdesudo
then
SUDO=`which kdesudo`
fi
if ( available gksudo && available kdesudo )
then
if [ $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP = "KDE" ]; then
SUDO=`which kdesudo`;
else
SUDO=`which gksudo`
fi
fi
# prefer polkit if available
if available pkexec
then
SUDO=`which pkexec`
fi
fi
if [ -z $SUDO ]; then
if available zenity; then
zenity --info --text "$MESSAGE"
exit 0
elif available notify-send; then
notify-send "$MESSAGE"
exit 0
elif available xmessage notify-send; then
xmessage -buttons Ok:0 "$MESSAGE"
exit 0
else
echo "$MESSAGE"
fi
fi
fi
if [ "$platform" == "Darwin" ]
then
$SUDO -e "do shell script \"$*\" with administrator privileges"
else
$SUDO $@
fi
Basically, the way I set up my system is that I keep subfolders inside the bin directories (e.g. /usr/local/bin/pyscripts in /usr/local/bin), and create symbolic links to the executables. This has three benefits for me:
(1) If I have different versions, I can easily switch which one is executed by changing the symbolic link and it keeps the bin directory cleaner (e.g. /usr/local/bin/gcc-versions/4.9/, /usr/local/bin/gcc-versions/4.8/, /usr/local/bin/gcc --> gcc-versions/4.8/gcc)
(2) I can store the scripts with their extension (helpful for syntax highlighting in IDEs), but the executables do not contain them because I like it that way (e.g. svn-tools --> pyscripts/svn-tools.py)
(3) The reason I will show below:
I name the script "run-as-root-wrapper" and place it in a very common path (e.g. /usr/local/bin) so python doesn't need anything special to locate it. Then I have the following run_command.py module:
import os
import sys
from distutils.spawn import find_executable
#===========================================================================#
def wrap_to_run_as_root(exe_install_path, true_command, expand_path = True):
run_as_root_path = find_executable("run-as-root-wrapper")
if(not run_as_root_path):
return False
else:
if(os.path.exists(exe_install_path)):
os.unlink(exe_install_path)
if(expand_path):
true_command = os.path.realpath(true_command)
true_command = os.path.abspath(true_command)
true_command = os.path.normpath(true_command)
f = open(exe_install_path, 'w')
f.write("#!/bin/bash\n\n")
f.write(run_as_root_path + " " + true_command + " $@\n\n")
f.close()
os.chmod(exe_install_path, 0755)
return True
In my actual python script, I have the following function:
def install_cmd(args):
exe_install_path = os.path.join(args.prefix,
os.path.join("bin", args.name))
if(not run_command.wrap_to_run_as_root(exe_install_path, sys.argv[0])):
os.symlink(os.path.realpath(sys.argv[0]), exe_install_path)
So if I have a script called TrackingBlocker.py (actual script I use to modify the /etc/hosts file to re-route known tracking domains to 127.0.0.1), when I call "sudo /usr/local/bin/pyscripts/TrackingBlocker.py --prefix /usr/local --name ModifyTrackingBlocker install" (arguments handled via argparse module), it installs "/usr/local/bin/ModifyTrackingBlocker", which is a bash script executing
/usr/local/bin/run-as-root-wrapper /usr/local/bin/pyscripts/TrackingBlocker.py [args]
e.g.
ModifyTrackingBlocker add tracker.ads.com
executes:
/usr/local/bin/run-as-root-wrapper /usr/local/bin/pyscripts/TrackingBlocker.py add tracker.ads.com
which then displays the authentification dialog needed to get the privileges to add:
127.0.0.1 tracker.ads.com
to my hosts file (which is only writable by a superuser).
If you want to simplify/modify it to run only certain commands as root, you could simply add this to your script (with the necessary imports noted above + import subprocess):
def run_as_root(command, args, expand_path = True):
run_as_root_path = find_executable("run-as-root-wrapper")
if(not run_as_root_path):
return 1
else:
if(expand_path):
command = os.path.realpath(command)
command = os.path.abspath(command)
command = os.path.normpath(command)
cmd = []
cmd.append(run_as_root_path)
cmd.append(command)
cmd.extend(args)
return subprocess.call(' '.join(cmd), shell=True)
Using the above (in run_command module):
>>> ret = run_command.run_as_root("/usr/local/bin/pyscripts/TrackingBlocker.py", ["status", "display"])
>>> /etc/hosts is blocking approximately 16147 domains
On Windows you cannot get the UAC dialog without starting a new process, and you cannot even start that process with CreateProcess.
The UAC dialog can be brought about by running another application that has the appropriate manifest file - see Running compiled python (py2exe) as administrator in Vista for an example of how to do this with py2exe.
You can also programatically use the runas verb with the win32 api ShellExecute http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb762153(v=vs.85).aspx - you can call this by using ctypes http://python.net/crew/theller/ctypes/ which is part of the standard library on python 2.5+ iirc.
Sorry don't know about Mac. If you give more detail on what you want to accomplish on Windows I might be able to provide more specific help.
I'm having the same problem on Mac OS X. I have a working solution, but it's not optimal. I will explain my solution here and continue looking for a better one.
At the beginning of the program I check if I'm root or not by executing
def _elevate():
"""Elevate user permissions if needed"""
if platform.system() == 'Darwin':
try:
os.setuid(0)
except OSError:
_mac_elevate()
os.setuid(0) will fail if i'm not already root and that will trigger _mac_elevate() which relaunch my program from the start as administrator with the help of osascript. osascript can be used to execute applescript and other stuff. I use it like this:
def _mac_elevate():
"""Relaunch asking for root privileges."""
print "Relaunching with root permissions"
applescript = ('do shell script "./my_program" '
'with administrator privileges')
exit_code = subprocess.call(['osascript', '-e', applescript])
sys.exit(exit_code)
The problem with this is if I use subprocess.call as above I keep the current process running and there will be two instances of my app running giving two dock icons. If I use subprocess.Popen instead and let the non-priviledged process die instantly I can't make use of the exit code, nor can I fetch the stdout/stderr streams and propagate to the terminal starting the original process.
Using osascript with with administrator privileges is actually just Apple Script wrapping a call to AuthorizationExecuteWithPrivileges().
But you can call AuthorizationExecuteWithPrivileges() directly from Python3 with ctypes.
For example, the following parent script spawn_root.py (run as a non-root user) spawns a child process root_child.py (run with root privileges).
The user will be prompted to enter their password in the OS GUI pop-up. Note that this will not work on a headless session (eg over ssh). It must be run inside the GUI (eg Terminal.app).
After entering the user's password into the MacOS challenge dialog correctly, root_child.py executes a soft shutdown of the system, which requires root permission on MacOS.
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import sys, ctypes
import ctypes.util
from ctypes import byref
sec = ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary(ctypes.util.find_library("Security"))
kAuthorizationFlagDefaults = 0
auth = ctypes.c_void_p()
r_auth = byref(auth)
sec.AuthorizationCreate(None,None,kAuthorizationFlagDefaults,r_auth)
exe = [sys.executable,"root_child.py"]
args = (ctypes.c_char_p * len(exe))()
for i,arg in enumerate(exe[1:]):
args[i] = arg.encode('utf8')
io = ctypes.c_void_p()
sec.AuthorizationExecuteWithPrivileges(auth,exe[0].encode('utf8'),0,args,byref(io))
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import os
if __name__ == "__main__":
f = open( "root_child.out", "a" )
try:
os.system( "shutdown -h now" )
f.write( "SUCCESS: I am root!\n" )
except Exception as e:
f.write( "ERROR: I am not root :'(" +str(e)+ "\n" )
f.close()
Obviously, any time you run something as root, you need to be very careful!
AuthorizationExecuteWithPrivileges() is deprecated, but it can be used safely. But it can also be used unsafely!
It basically boils down to: do you actually know what you're running as root? If the script you're running as root is located in a Temp dir that has world-writeable permissions (as a lot of MacOS App installers have done historically), then any malicious process could gain root access.
To execute a process as root safely:
