CONSOLEHELPER(8)

✨ CONSOLEHELPER(8) ✨

okay bestie, welcome to section 8 of the System Manager's Manual — this is consolehelper and she's lowkey the ✨middleware queen✨ of your system 💅

🌸 NAME 🌸

consolehelper — a wrapper that helps console users run system programs 🫶

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

progname [ options ]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so consolehelper is this tool that makes it so easy for console users to run system programs, and the way it does that is by doing authentication via PAM — and PAM can be set up to either trust all console users, or to ask for a password, at the system administrator's discretion 👑. When it's possible, the authentication is done graphically ✨; but if that's not happening, then it's done within the text console from which consolehelper was started. either way, she's got you 💜

The whole vibe is that it's intended to be completely transparent. Which means — and this is the important part — the user will never run the consolehelper program directly. nope, never, not once 🙈

Instead, programs like /sbin/shutdown are paired with a link from /usr/bin/shutdown to /usr/bin/consolehelper. so then when non-root users (specifically, users without /sbin in their path, or with /sbin after /usr/bin) call the "shutdown" program, consolehelper gets invoked to authenticate the action and then invoke /sbin/shutdown. it's giving invisible assistant energy fr fr 🧚

okay real talk though — consolehelper itself has no privileges. like, zero. she calls the userhelper(8) program to do the real work. she's just the messenger bestie 😭

consolehelper requires that a PAM configuration for every managed program exist. so to make /sbin/foo or /usr/sbin/foo managed, you need to:

1. create a link from /usr/bin/foo to /usr/bin/consolehelper 🔗
2. create the file /etc/pam.d/foo, normally using the pam_console(8) PAM module 📄

that's the whole recipe. no cap. ✨

💅 OPTIONS 💅

This program has no command line options of its own — she passes all command line options on to the program she's calling. so whatever flags you throw at her, she just hands them straight over. generous queen 👑

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• userhelper(8)

💖 AUTHOR 💖

Michael K. Johnson <johnsonm@redhat.com> — icon, legend, the moment 🫶

and that's the whole page bestie!! Red Hat Software, 18 March 1999, CONSOLEHELPER(8) — she's been slaying since the nineties and she's still here 💀✨ periodt 🎀