Desktop environment agnostic method for prompting the user for a password?

Question

In Gnome, there is gksudo.

In KDE, there is kdesudo.

Is there a command that can be run on any desktop environment that will prompt the user for the root password and then run a command?

See also: freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications. If you find anything, consider submitting the information to the Freedesktop guys, since it will be generally useful. — Mechanical snail, Jan 11, 2013 at 18:23

Nathan Osman · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-10 06:13:08Z

2

The manpage for the zenity command Manpage icon contains the following description:

zenity is a program that will display GTK+ dialogs, and return (either in the return code, or on standard output) the users input.

As far as I can tell (and my testing backs this up), this will work in both the Gnome and KDE desktop environments. For example:

zenity --password | sudo -S nautilus

...will prompt you for your root password and then launch Nautilus.

answered Jan 10, 2013 at 6:13

Nathan Osman

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Wasn't there some reason you were supposed to run graphical programs using gksu/kdesudo rather than sudo though? Something about setting up the proper environment.
– Mechanical snail
Jan 10, 2013 at 6:34
Oh. I see you're discussing it in chat.
– Mechanical snail
Jan 10, 2013 at 6:39

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