Geoclue provider requires root permissions

[Bastien Nocera]

On Thu, 2011-03-31 at 18:36 +0300, Leonid Yurchenko wrote:
> On 03/31/2011 05:01 PM, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> > On Thu, 2011-03-31 at 16:39 +0300, Leonid Yurchenko wrote:
> >> Hi all.
> >>
> >> (is you saw this already - sorry for repeating mail, but previous seems
> >> to be stuck somewhere)
> >>
> >> I'm writing a geoclue provider that requires root permissions. In
> >> particular it requires access to wifi driver via wireless tools
> >> (initiate a scan). All is working perfectly when I start client
> >> application with sudo. But obviously I want a regular user to be able to
> >> use this provider without sudoing. How can I achieve this?
> > Why does it need that? I would expect connman, or NetworkManager to be
> > able to provide you with the details of nearby APs. In fact, that's
> > already how the skyhook provider works.
> 
> Hi, Bastien. Thanks for your answer.
> 
> As far as I know, both connman and NetworkManager are unable to initiate 
> a scan. They are passively collecting available access points. That 
> isn't enough for my case, I need to get freshest APs, and initiate a 
> wifi scan (that's easily done with wireless_tools, but requires superuser).
> 
> Isn't it possible to dbus service to be automatically launched by demand 
> with root privileges?

There's a good reason why it requires super-user. I would rather you
used either connman or NetworkManager to poke at the network. They
already know when they last scanned, how long a scan is expected to
take, and this sort of thing.

Trying to work around that is likely to cause more problems than it
solves.