Graphically ask for password in a bash script and retain default sudo timeout setting

Question

The sudo -A (SUDO_ASKPASS) option apparently causes sudo to lose the timeout (e.g., timestamp_timeout) setting.

I want to use the sudo -A option but I want to retain the default timeout (e.g., 15 minutes on Ubuntu) in a bash script. I want to ask for the user's password securely and in a GUI dialog, but I only want to prompt once for my script (not 50+ times).

Furthermore, I do not want to run my entire script as the root user because I just think that is a bad idea. Furthermore, files created by my script have the wrong ownership in this case.

The sudo -A option would work for me if it retained the default timeout.

From the sudo manual:

Option: ‐A

Normally, if sudo requires a password, it will read it from the user's terminal. If the ‐A (askpass) option is specified, a (possibly graphical) helper program is executed to read the user's password and output the password to the standard output. If the SUDO_ASKPASS environment variable is set, it specifies the path to the helper program. Otherwise, if /etc/sudo.conf contains a line specifying the askpass program, that value will be used. For example:

# Path to askpass helper program
Path askpass /usr/X11R6/bin/ssh-askpass

BTW, kdesudo has this same problem -- it requires the password every time it is called, even if just a second later in the same script.

I'm using Kubuntu 12.04 64 bit.

Here are full working example of all parts of the solution. It consists of a bash script, a "myaskpass" script as suggested here, and a ".desktop" file. The whole things should be 100% GUI (no terminal interaction at all), so the .desktop file is essential (afaik).

$ cat myaskpass.sh 
#!/bin/bash
kdialog --password "Please enter your password: "
exit 0
$ cat askpasstest1.desktop 
#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open
[Desktop Entry]
Comment=SUDO_ASKPASS tester1
Exec=bash /home/user/test/askpasstest1.sh
GenericName=SUDO_ASKPASS tester1
Name=SUDO_ASKPASS tester1
NoDisplay=false
Path[$e]=
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
TerminalOptions=
Type=Application
Categories=Application;Utility;
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=

And a test script itself. This one will ask for your password twice when using this solution.

#!/bin/bash
sudo -k
SUDO_ASKPASS="/home/user/test/myaskpass.sh" sudo -A touch filemadeas_askpass1
touch filemadeas_regularuser1
SUDO_ASKPASS="/home/user/test/myaskpass.sh" sudo -A touch filemadeas_askpass2
touch filemadeas_regularuser2
ls -la filemadeas* > /home/user/test/fma.log
kdialog --title "Files Created" --textbox /home/user/test/fma.log 640 480
sudo rm filemadeas_*
rm fma.log
exit 0

• slm: Is gksudo not an option here? linux.die.net/man/1/gksudo
• MountainX: I'm on KDE, so gksudo isn't an option for me, but I was told it works the same as kdesudo. kdesudo suffers the same problem I describe above. I was testing sudo -A as an alternative to kdesudo and it is better for my situation, but it doesn't solve the timeout issue (at least so far).

Answer 1

I add this to my bash script:

# ask for password up-front.
sudo -v
# Keep-alive: update existing sudo time stamp if set, otherwise do nothing.
while true; do sudo -n true; sleep 60; kill -0 "$$" || exit; done 2>/dev/null &

Found it here:

https://serverfault.com/questions/266039/temporarlly-increasing-sudos-timeout-for-the-duration-of-an-install-script

https://gist.github.com/cowboy/3118588

I use another script to launch my main script and I use a .desktop file to launch that helper script. It's not very straightforward, but it can be made to work 100% GUI. I'm still looking for the perfect solution, but this is doing the trick for now.

Answer 2

How about gksudo?

$ gksudo your_app_launcher.sh

It does show a graphical dialog for safely entering the administrator password.