Re: su in debian.rules

[Ian Jackson <ian@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk>]

Mark W. Eichin writes ("Re: su in debian.rules"):
...
>    I'll be
> working on having dpkg-deb take an externally supplied tar file, which
> would cover all of my needs...
> 
> 1) I *am* installing the packages, specifically to test them. In fact,
...
> 2) Many of my packages only need root to install because of dpkg
> itself; having an installer (classically "bin") group would be
> enough...

If you send me a good patch for a
  --force-not-root
flag that (1) disables the check for being root and (2) considers
files owned by root.root and mode 0644 or 0755 as being owned, in the
archive, by the user and group running dpkg, I'll consider including
it.

I think that's all that's required to get dpkg to install most
packages without being root.

Of course, many packages will have to set special permissions or need
their pre/post-inst/rm scripts run as root (eg, to start and stop
daemons or whatever), and to get it to work you'd have to change the
permissions on many relevant directories.

Ian.