Execute actions as privileged user
KAuth provides a convenient, system-integrated way to offload actions that need to be performed as a privileged user (root, for example) to small (hopefully secure) helper utilities.
If you are using CMake, you need to have
find_package(KF6Auth NO_MODULE)
(or find KF6 with the Auth component) in your CMakeLists.txt file. You need to link to KF6::AuthCore.
Executing privileged actions typically involves having a minimal helper utility that does the actual work, and calling that utility with escalated privileges if the user has permission to do so (often requiring the user to enter appropriate credentials, like entering a password).
Therefore, use of the KAuth library is in two parts. In the main part of your code, you use KAuth::Action (and specifically KAuth::Action::execute()) when you need to do something privileged, like write to a file normally only writable by root.
The code that actually performs that action, such as writing to a file, needs to
be placed in the slot of a helper QObject class, which should use the methods of
KAuth::HelperSupport and be compiled into an executable. You will also want to
use the kauth_install_helper_files
and kauth_install_actions
macros in your
CMakeLists.txt.
See https://develop.kde.org/docs/features/kauth/ for a detailed tutorial on how to use KAuth.