PolicyKit is an operating system component for controlling system-wide privileges in Unix-like

Unix-like

A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....

 operating systems. It provides an organized way for non-privileged processes to communicate with privileged ones. In contrast to systems such as sudo

Sudo

sudo is a program for Unix-like computer operating systems that allows users to run programs with the security privileges of another user...

, it does not grant root permission to an entire process, but rather allows a finer level of control of centralized system policy. It is developed and maintained by David Zeuthen from Red Hat

Red Hat

Red Hat, Inc. is an S&P 500 company in the free and open source software sector, and a major Linux distribution vendor. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina with satellite offices worldwide....

 and hosted by the freedesktop.org

Freedesktop.org

freedesktop.org is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free software desktop environments for the X Window System on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. It was founded by Havoc Pennington from Red Hat in March 2000.The organisation focuses on the user....

 project.

Fedora

Fedora (operating system)

Fedora is a RPM-based, general purpose collection of software, including an operating system based on the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat...

 was the first distribution to include PolicyKit and it has since been used in various other distributions including Ubuntu

Ubuntu (operating system)

Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...

 since 8.04 and OpenSUSE

OpenSUSE

openSUSE is a general purpose operating system built on top of the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported openSUSE Project and sponsored by SUSE...

since 10.3.

It is also possible to use PolicyKit to execute commands with elevated privileges using the command pkexec followed by the command intended to be executed with root permissions.

External links

• PolicyKit Home at freedesktop.org
• Documentation at freedesktop.org