Re: How to install .deb package as non-root user?
On Sat, Apr 15, 2006 at 12:43:57PM -0500, Matt England wrote:
> How can one install .deb package as non-root user? I see a 'dpkg --root'
> parameter, but it doesn't seem to help (as per below).
>
> Redhat's rpm can install with an non-root account; why not
> dpkg/apt/wajig...or maybe one of these things can do this somehow and I
> don't know about it?
>
> I'm part of a software development team that plans to produce Debian
> packages. However, one of our requirements is to be able to support
> non-root installs of our software (to a user's home directory, for
> example). I would be quite disappionted if the Debian package system can
> not support this.
> ...
I wanted to do this recently, but concluded that it's just not possible
currently. The package wants to put various files in privileged places,
and those locations tend to be "hard" references. I'm not sure that the
problem is that the package system "can" not support it so much as that
it doesn't support it. Other complexities are dependencies and such.
On the other hand, maybe it's possible to provide for everything under
a chroot jail? I haven't tried this, and just gave up on my attempt.
I'm happy that the package system works as well as it does, so find it
hard to diss it on this account. I suspect it would need some fairly
major changes to build in indirection of some kind to support this.
--
Ken Irving
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