Best way to gain root privileges

[GSO]

>
> Passing things through sudo(1) is really the only sensible route these
> days but even that can be fraught with peril.  For something as simple
> as, 'Write to a normally restricted area' it's probably no more secure
> than an ACL (and potentially way less if you screw up the sudo
> configuration).
>

OK, so I'm heading towards sudo then, aiming to make sure I don't
screw up the configuration.  This is a home CCTV application, so I
want things as secure as possible.  A setgid wrapper would require the
kind of skilled programming that I couldn't do myself in order to keep
things at a high level of security, but sudo I can handle.

There is also policykit http://live.gnome.org/PolicyKit which I
mentioned in the initial post I think - not sure if this python lib
can be used to do what I need though...
https://fedorahosted.org/python-slip/