Using CyPower

Documentation / CyPower

• Overview of CyPower
  • What It Does
  • What It Is Not
• Using CyPower
  • Why The Rows Grey Out
  • What A Click Does
  • Checking The Grant
  • End Session Versus Power Rows
• Command Line
  • Actions
  • Safe Probes
  • Rule And Host Facts
• Copyright

Using CyPower

Day to day you do not type cypower. You use System > Restart System or System > Shut Down System in the Toolchest. Those rows exec cypower with reboot or halt.

Why The Rows Grey Out

cypower ships as share data. make install and the ordinary bin-link helpers deliberately leave it off PATH. cyanotype.inst installs the doas/sudo (or IRIX sysadm) grant, checks that the escalation tool will honour it, then deploys the binary where checkexec can see it.

Until that happens, both Toolchest rows stay grey. Afterward they light up. Remove the grant or the binary and they grey again. That is how the menu stays honest on a machine that cannot power itself down from your account.

What A Click Does

The row runs one of:

cypower reboot
cypower halt

Under the hood that is doas or sudo of the host shutdown with a fixed argument list (or IRIX runtask against the reboot/shutdown sysadm tasks). nopass is required so a Toolchest click does not stop for a password prompt. The rule matches that argv exactly -- a different shutdown flag is not covered.

Checking The Grant

Before you rely on the menu, from a shell that can see cypower:

cypower --check reboot
cypower --check halt
cypower --dry-run halt

--check asks the escalation tool whether the action is permitted right now (exit 0 if yes). --dry-run prints the exact command and runs nothing.

Admins building the rule by hand:

cypower --facts
cypower --rule
cypower --rule-path
cypower --grants

--facts is what cyanotype.inst reads (os, tool, paths, whether the rule is appended, whether sysadm tasks exist). Prefer letting cyanotype.inst install the snippet rather than pasting by guess.

End Session Versus Power Rows

Logout and the cancelable end-session dialog are CySplash (and the old cylogout shim that forwards to it). Use those when you want to leave the session. Use the Toolchest power rows when you intend to restart or shut the machine under the scoped grant.

See Also

• Overview of CyPower
• Command Line