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I have a whole series of commands that I need to run on login, many of which require root privileges. So, to save a few steps I put them all into one apple script so I wouldn't have to open the terminal.

But still, I'd like to be able to do this without entering my password at all (I like to boot my machine early AM while I'm still sleeping). So I thought, why not just store my admin password in the keychain and have the script access that key.

But this just feels wrong, storing the admin password in keychain...

So, what are your thoughts? Is this an acceptable method of giving my program permission? If applescript isn't secure enough, I could easily do this with a simple cocoa app.

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I do this myself. I store admin passwords for other computers so I can auto-mount shares over my lan using applescript scripts. In my opinion, if the keychain is secure enough to hold any password then it must be secure enough to hold all passwords. The password is never displayed in the clear so I don't see a problem.

Of course there's always a security risk when someone has direct access to your computer. They can run an applescript to pull your password out of the Keychain if they know the name of the key where it is stored and they are accessing the keychain from your admin account. But if someone has that much access then your computer isn't safe anyway.

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I suppose that's why I thought that keychain scripting might be an acceptable solution. What about applications that need root access for certain tasks, do they store those? I certainly trust myself, but I'd not feel comfortable entering my password for a third party application. –  Andrew J. Freyer Jul 20 '10 at 20:31
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