Determining login privileges

FROM : Antonio Nunes
DATE : Sun Jul 09 09:00:34 2006

Hi,

I need to be able to determine whether my running app has the ability 
to create a folder in /Library/Application Support. I've been hunting 
for this for a couple of days now, but am not getting any closer to 
the solution.

I have looked at the security framework docs and searched online and 
have tried using AuthorizationCopyRights to determine the current 
authorization status, but even when I'm logged in as an admin user I 
get the result code -60007 (The Security Server denied authorization 
because no user interaction is allowed), so that doesn't seem the way 
to go.

I haven't found any pointers in the docs, nor online, to help 
determine either if the app can write to the desired folder or if the 
current user has admin privileges. The only thing I can think of is 
to try to create a file in the directory and see whether it fails, 
but that seems a wrong way to go about it. I'm sure there must be a 
more appropriate technique for this.

How do I find out what privileges I have then?

Specifically my app wants to be able to create its own directory in 
the /Library/Application Support if it can and in ~/Library/
Application Support if it can't.

My strategy is that if a user is an admin then the application 
license file and other support files are installed for all users, but 
if the user is not an admin then both the license file and other 
support files will be installed for the current user only. The app 
should determine on startup whether to use the local or the current 
user Application Support directory for its session.

If run by a non admin user and it can't find a license file in the 
user's app support directory then it will check the support directory 
for local domain, so if the app was registered by an admin on the 
machine, it will be re registered for for everybody. Alternatively I 
could always install the license file in /Library/Application 
Support, but am I correct that I then need to request authorization 
from the user and use a helper tool if the user is logged in without 
admin privileges?

Thanks,
Antonio

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Forgiveness is not an occasional act;
it is a permanent attitude.

--Martin Luther King, Jr
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