PKCHECK(1)							      pkcheck								PKCHECK(1)

NAME

       pkcheck - Check whether a process is authorized

SYNOPSIS

       pkcheck [--version] [--help]

       pkcheck --action-id action {--process { pid | pid,pid-start-time } | --system-bus-name busname} [--allow-user-interaction]
	       [--detail key value...]

DESCRIPTION

       pkcheck is used to check whether a process, specified by either --process or --system-bus-name, is authorized for action. The --detail
       option can be used zero or more times to pass details about action. If --allow-user-interaction is passed, pkcheck blocks while waiting for
       authentication.

       This command is a simple wrapper around the PolicyKit D-Bus interface; see the D-Bus interface documentation for details.

RETURN VALUE

       If the specified process is authorized, pkcheck exits with a return value of 0. If the authorization result contains any details, these are
       printed on standard output as key/value pairs using environment style reporting, e.g. first the key followed by a an equal sign, then the
       value followed by a newline.

	   KEY1=VALUE1
	   KEY2=VALUE2
	   KEY3=VALUE3
	   ...

       Octects that are not in [a-zA-Z0-9_] are escaped using octal codes prefixed with . For example, the UTF-8 string fol, will be printed as
       f303270l54344275240345245275.

       If the specificied process is not authorized, pkcheck exits with a return value of 1 and a diagnostic message is printed on standard error.
       Details are printed on standard output.

       If the specificied process is not authorized because no suitable authentication agent is available or if the --allow-user-interaction
       wasn't passed, pkcheck exits with a return value of 2 and a diagnostic message is printed on standard error. Details are printed on
       standard output.

       If an error occured while checking for authorization, pkcheck exits with a return value of 127 with a diagnostic message printed on
       standard error.

       If one or more of the options passed are malformed, pkcheck exits with a return value of 126. If stdin is a tty, then this manual page is
       also shown.

NOTES

       Since process identifiers can be recycled, the caller should always use pid,pid-start-time to specify the process to check for
       authorization when using the --process option. The value of pid-start-time can be determined by consulting e.g. the proc(5) file system
       depending on the operating system. If only pid is passed to the --process option, then pkcheck will look up the start time itself but note
       that this may be racy.

AUTHOR

       Written by David Zeuthen davidz@redhat.com with a lot of help from many others.

BUGS

       Please send bug reports to either the distribution or the polkit-devel mailing list, see the link
       http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/polkit-devel on how to subscribe.

SEE ALSO

       polkit(8), pkaction(1), pkexec(1)

polkit								     May 2009								PKCHECK(1)