[izpack-devel] Need a bit of info on the Mac

[Pierre Frisch]

No That is false and that is a function that is sorely missing in  
izPack on the Mac.

If you are using Apple installer there is a function to request  
authentication so that the user can enter his credentials. This is  
driven by the install script. If you are developing in C, C++ or ObjC  
and need admin privilege there is a framework the program needs to  
call; the system will then request authentication from the user by  
whatever policy rule is in place for the system and return the result  
to the calling program. This is very good solution as only the  
required program is authenticated and only for the duration of the  
required operation. The user does not need to be logged as root and  
it only need to be listed in the sudoer root does not need to be  
enabled on the machine.

I did a JNI implementation of this 4 years ago on MacOSX 10.0. A  
little bit of Google gave me a more recent implementation still as  
JNI and not more recent that 10.2.3: http://www.amug.org/~glguerin/sw/ 
authkit/overview.html

I have not worked on this in any recent version of Java/MacOSX  
although I would be interested as I have a project that may benefit  
form this. In Java 1.4 there is an API for authentication that I  
think could be used to achieve the necessary result. I think we  
should take a cross platform approach to this. How does this work on  
Linux and Windows? Can you install with a non root account system  
files? Would that be valuable or is it only MacOSX people that are  
used to be able to do that?

Pierre


On 10-Jan-06, at 1:06 PM, Hal Vaughan wrote:

> On Tuesday 10 January 2006 03:51 pm, Aaron Mulder wrote:
>> On Mac OS X, if you try to install a program that writes to system
>> directories or whatever, you get a prompt to enter your password  
>> (like
>> a sudo, effectively).  I don't know whether the OS manages that any
>> time an installer tries to do something that requires higher  
>> privs, or
>> whether the installer needs to preemtively make some calls to prompt
>> the user and elevate privs before attempting to do the protected
>> action.
>>
>> Aaron
>
> So if you're trying to install a program on the Mac with IzPack and  
> it needs
> admin rights, the OS will ask for a password automatically?  In  
> other words
> is installing on a admin/superuser account not an issue on Mac?
>
> Hal
>
>
>> On 1/10/06, Hal Vaughan <hal at thresholddigital.com> wrote:
>>> For you Mac users out there, I have a question:
>>>
>>> On Linux and Windows I know there are some programs you can't  
>>> install
>>> unless you are root or Administrator.  What is the Mac equivalent of
>>> this?  I know the Mac root account in OSX is disabled by  
>>> default.  Can
>>> any user install any program?
>>>
>>> I also know that for other flavors of *nix, it would be root, but  
>>> are
>>> there any other OSes out there that IzPack works on with a  
>>> different name
>>> for the equivalent of the root account?
>>>
>>> Hal
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> izpack-devel mailing list
>>> izpack-devel at lists.berlios.de
>>> http://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/izpack-devel
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> izpack-devel mailing list
>> izpack-devel at lists.berlios.de
>> http://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/izpack-devel
> _______________________________________________
> izpack-devel mailing list
> izpack-devel at lists.berlios.de
> http://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/izpack-devel
>