MACOSX: how to start a daemon that needs root privileges from a cocoa application

The conditions are as follows: MacOSX 10.7 and Cocoa graphical application written in objective-c.

I am facing the following problem. I cannot start the daemon app from the / user / bin folder from my Cocoa app. I know I must be root for this.

I have an installer, not * .pkg, but a hand-written installer. I need to start my daemons after the installation process is complete. How do I elevate privileges in an objective-c application?

I have this code. But the call to AuthorizationExecuteWithPrivileges is deprecated.

We shouldn't use it.

AuthorizationItem authItem      = { kSMRightModifySystemDaemons, 0, NULL, 0 };
AuthorizationRights authRights  = { 1, &authItem };
AuthorizationFlags flags        = kAuthorizationFlagDefaults |
                                  kAuthorizationFlagInteractionAllowed |
                                  kAuthorizationFlagPreAuthorize |
                                  kAuthorizationFlagExtendRights;

AuthorizationRef authRef = NULL;

OSStatus status = AuthorizationCreate(&authRights,
kAuthorizationEmptyEnvironment, flags, &authRef);

status = AuthorizationExecuteWithPrivileges(authorizationRef, tool, kAuthorizationFlagDefaults, args, &pipe);

      

        
        
        
      

    

The second way is to use a privileged helper. This method looks very complicated for my case. I just need to start the daemons after installation.

In the course, I can ask the user to restart the mac. But I would like to avoid this.

Another possibility is the SUID bit in the daemon executable. But I don't think it's safe.

My question is: Is there an even easier way to do this?