How to install RPM as a user, root installation not allowed

Panu Matilainen pmatilai at laiskiainen.org
Mon Apr 1 08:19:55 UTC 2013


On 04/01/2013 08:48 AM, David Abdurachmanov wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Currently I am using RPM 4.8.0, which quite some patches already.
> Oneof is ability to install packages as user, not at as root. We are
> running a system where all your packages must be installed with a
> special user, which is not root for security reasons.
>
> Does RPM 4.11.0.1 already has the options for non-root install, or
> it  still requires patching to drop root user check?

Generally rpm doesn't much care about the actual user used to run it, 
but come to think of it, there's about one spot where rpm explicitly 
checks for root, which is chmod() and friends which traditionally 
require root.

I suppose your special user is roughly equal to root in terms of 
privileges, just a different uid? That's a different case from what 
people typically refer to as "non-root installation" (meaning 
installation by non-privileged user), and okay I can see how that would 
be problematic - yes the ancient check surrounding chmod() is still there.

It's easy enough to remove the check without affecting functionality of 
course, now that the issue has been brought to my attention...

	- Panu -


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