CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cmacosnetwork-programming
hobbyist
hobbyist

Reputation: 31

Privileges required to change Mac network settings programmatically, as normal user

Is there a special group or a capability (similar to Linux' CAP_NET_xxx) that would enable a user to change network settings programmatically on Mac OS X? The settings I am interested in are the IP address and netmask of an interface, set programmatically from a C program (via an ioctl call, sending an ifreq struct). The user type I am using at the moment is a stock "Admin" account on my Mac laptop. Ultimately, I wish for my program to add the user once to such a convenient group so that in subsequent runs the user can manipulate the IP address of interfaces without prompting.

Thanks

Upvotes: 2

Views: 868

Answers (2)

Anya Shenanigans
Anya Shenanigans

Reputation: 94829

Mac OS X will pretty much require root privileges to change any network settings. You would need to run the program as root in order to change the settings. As mentioned by @edufinn, the sudo command is ideal for this.

However, if you want to change the configuration in a supported manner you should try one of the following approaches:

Changing the configuration through these APIs will inform applications that the network configuration has changed so they can react appropriately - e.g. make/reset a connection.

Upvotes: 1

edufinn
edufinn

Reputation: 2447

Mac OS X is BSD system. You can run your program with sudo command. It's not very obvious from your post what is exactly a problem?

Upvotes: 0

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