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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>