Help requested with KAuth backends : OS X

[Sune Vuorela]

On 2016-09-17, René J.V  Bertin <rjvbertin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Can someone please give me some help setting up a working Mac backend for KAuth?

I know nothing about mac, and only have a limited knowledge of KAuth, on
linux, but I'll give it a go replying anyways.

On linux, there is a thing called policykit. It is a backround daemon
running as root and is available on the *system bus*.

Whenever an application wants something that requires elevated
priviledges, it contacts policykit, that does the authorization and
execution as the relevant user.

Thus, there is no setuid bits in place.

What I think you should do is
  1) What priviledged usages do you actually need and in what apps
     - if it is actually not needed, just ensure that all requests are
       responded with a "no"
  2) How is the platform API for invocating things as a different user /
     with admin priviledges?
     - then implement a kauth backend on top of that api. 
  
I'd say that on a linux system, the kauth bits is mostly relevant to
 - systemsettings and related KCM's
 - hardware configuration / access (printer, scanner, ...) 
 - network setup
 - bluetooth setup
 - application installation
 - special hardware requiring applications. Maybe KStars interacting
   with a telescope, or a theoretical KAdvancedSewingMachine, K3DPrinter
   or similar. 

I'm not sure if much of this is relevant for most systems that doesn't
run a plasma desktop (or at least uses KDE's system configuration
utilities), unless it is applications in the last category.

/Sune