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Elevate: Request root privileges

Elevate is a small Python library that re-launches the current process with root/admin privileges using one of the following mechanisms:

  • UAC (Windows)
  • AppleScript (macOS)
  • pkexec, gksudo or kdesudo (Linux)
  • sudo (Linux, macOS)

Usage

To use, call elevate.elevate() early in your script. When run as root this function does nothing. When not run as root, this function replaces the current process (Linux, macOS) or creates a new process, waits, and exits (Windows). Consider the following example:

import os
from elevate import elevate

def is_root():
    return os.getuid() == 0

print("before ", is_root())
elevate()
print("after ", is_root())

This prints:

before False
before True
after True

On Windows, the new process's standard streams are not attached to the parent, which is an inherent limitation of UAC. By default the new process runs in a new console window. To suppress this window, use elevate(show_console=False).

On Linux and macOS, graphical prompts are tried before sudo by default. To prevent graphical prompts, use elevate(graphical=False).