[Linux-disciples] Installing a Debian package without root access

[Stephen R Laniel]

On Mon, Aug 01, 2005 at 09:41:49AM -0400, Adam Rosi-Kessel wrote:
> You can't really do Debian package management as non-root, unless someone
> has given you your own sandbox where you are, in fact, root.

I guess the way I'm thinking of it is this:

1) I chroot to something like ~/firefox.
2) I copy firefox.deb into ~/firefox and run dpkg -i
   firefox.deb.
3) Dpkg tries to write to the disk in this new environment
   with a different root. It can, so it does.
4) The filesystem, or kernel, allows the installation to
   proceed, because it sees that dpkg does have access to
   ~/firefox.
5) Files get installed in ~/firefox/usr/bin,
   ~/firefox/usr/lib, etc.

But it doesn't work this way. Dpkg seems to check whether
it's running as root when it starts; if it's not, it stops
running.

Are there good security reasons for it to run this way, or
is it more or less arbitrary?

-- 
Stephen R. Laniel
steve at laniels.org
+(617) 308-5571
http://laniels.org/
PGP key: http://laniels.org/slaniel.key
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