Port installation without root access

[Frank J. Laszlo]

Robert Backhaus wrote:
> On 2/14/06, Frank J. Laszlo <laszlof at vonostingroup.com> wrote:
>   
>> chris at i13i.com wrote:
>>     
>>>>     This has been on my TODO list for quite some time now, and I havent
>>>> really gotten around to actually implementing it. As it stands right
>>>> now, I have a script that allows normal users to build/install ports
>>>> with some environment trickery and a few hacks. I'd like to integrate
>>>> this into the ports system. so it would be as simple as a user
>>>> specifying a particular variable in their environment, NOROOT_BUILD, or
>>>> something along those lines, as well as other user specified variables
>>>> to allow full installation without root access.
>>>>     Normal users would be able to maintain their own package database,
>>>> and their own upgrades locally. Obviously we do not want to give normal
>>>> users access to ALL the ports, so i propose adding functionality to
>>>> allow the system admin to customize what the normal users have access
>>>> to. Such as a config file that says which ports they can and cannot
>>>> install, or whether to allow normal user installations at all.
>>>>     At this point im just probing for interest, and hoping to recruit a
>>>> couple port guru's to give me a hand with some of the details. :)
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>>     Frank
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> Hello,
>>> If you are going to allow users to install packages you mind as well give
>>> them root or admin privileges i dont see the point in letting users able
>>> to install [ackages on a machine which has more then one user on it but i
>>> am just commenting as most users normally need to install a couple things
>>> mostly irc crap like eggdrops or bnc's i have never had a email from a
>>> customer saying please install KDE for me
>>>
>>>       
>> That is very true.. but you have to remember. not all users are going to
>> be remote. There are other uses for freebsd than a web or a shell server.
>>
>> Regards,
>>     Frank
>> _______________________________________________
>> freebsd-ports at freebsd.org mailing list
>> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports
>> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-ports-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
>>
>>     
> It does make sense to install ports into, say, ~/local . I can see
> three things that you need: Wrtie access to the distfiles directory,
> (if you need to fetch), PREFIX set, and MAKEOBJDIR set to somewhere
> spacious and writeable.
>
> My limited experience is that this works, at least for the trivial
> ports for which user installation makes sense. Unless - Do ports
> recognise libraries/dependencies installed to /usr/local if PREFIX is
> altered?
>   

Yes, they do. thanks to ldconfig. But there are more things to 
workaround. Such as PKG_DBDIR (remember I said the user would maintain 
their own package database) mtree also requires root when being called 
from ports. So we need to set NO_MTREE. And user defined make arguments. 
each user could have their own custom make.conf, thanks to __MAKE_CONF. 
I also ran into a little problem with ranlib.. Usually before ranlib is 
run, the file is read only. Only root is able to write to a file with no 
write flag set. This wouldnt be a problem if the library was installed 
before ranlib is run, but that sometimes isnt the case. the user could 
also maintain their own linker hints file.

Regards,
    Frank