pkla-admin-identities - Man Page

pkla-admin-identities [--help]

pkla-admin-identities [--config-path config-path]

pkla-admin-identities interprets configuration files described below to determine which users polkit(8) considers administrators, using a non-JavaScript configuration file format described below.

Note: Determining which users are considered administrators is driven by JavaScript rules as described in polkit(8). pkla-admin-identities is called by a JavaScript rule file named 49-polkit-pkla-compat.rules; other JavaScript rules with a higher priority may exist, so the pkla-admin-identities configuration may not necessarily govern the final decision by polkit(8).

The ordering of the JavaScript rule files and the ordering of pkla-admin-identities configuration files is not integrated and uses different rules; the pkla-admin-identities configuration evaluation is happens at a single point within the JavaScript rule evaluation order.

pkla-admin-identities is an internal helper program of pkla-polkit-compat. You shouldn't need to run it directly, except for debugging purposes.

Configuration is read from files with a .conf extension in the /etc/polkit-1/localauthority.conf.d directory. All files are read in lexicographical order (using the C locale), meaning that later files can override earlier ones. The file 50-localauthority.conf contains the settings provided by the OS vendor. Users and 3rd party packages can drop configuration files with a priority higher than 60 to change the defaults. The configuration file format is simple. Each configuration file is a key file (also commonly known as a ini file) with a single group called [Configuration]. Only a single key, AdminIdentities is read. The value of this key is a semi-colon separated list of identities that can be used when administrator authentication is required. Users are specified by prefixing the user name with unix-user:, groups of users are specified by prefixing with unix-group:, and netgroups of users are specified with unix-netgroup:. See the section called “Example” for an example of a configuration file.

pkla-admin-identities outputs the resulting configuration of administrator identities, one identity per line, using the same format (including e.g. the unix-user: prefix). If no administrator identities are configured in the above-described configuration files, the output will be empty.

-h,  --help

Write a summary of the available options to standard output and exit successfully.

-c,  --config-path=config-path

Search for configuration files in config-path instead of the default /etc/polkit-1/localauthority.conf.d.

pkla-admin-identities exits with 0 on success (even if there are no administrator identities), and a non-zero status on error.

/etc/polkit-1/localauthority.conf.d

Default directory containing configuration files.

The following .conf file

[Configuration]
AdminIdentities=unix-group:staff

specifies that any user in the staff UNIX group can be used for authentication when administrator authentication is needed. This file would typically be installed in the /etc/polkit-1/localauthority.conf.d directory and given the name 60-desktop-policy.conf to ensure that it is evaluated after the 50-localauthority.conf file shipped with pkla-polkit-compat. If the local administrator wants to override this (suppose 60-desktop-policy.conf was shipped as part of the OS) he can simply create a file 99-my-admin-configuration.conf with the following content

[Configuration]
AdminIdentities=unix-user:lisa;unix-user:marge

to specify that only the users lisa and marge can authenticate when administrator authentication is needed.

Written by David Zeuthen <davidz@redhat.com> with a lot of help from many others. Adapted by Miloslav Trmač <mitr@redhat.com>.

polkit(8)

pklocalauthority(8).