Re: Install program

[Marc Ewing <marc redhat com>]

"Ben 'The Con Man' Kahn" <xkahn@mail.cybersites.com> writes:
> On 19 Apr 1998, Tom Tromey wrote:
> 
> > Ben> But what if you're not root?  As far as I'm concerned, there are
> > Ben> deep issues involved in installing software.  As far as I'm
> > Ben> concerned, software should be compiled and tested by a user, but
> > Ben> installed by root.
> > 
> > Ben> How is this problem being solved?
> > 
> > What is the problem exactly?  This GUI won't give a user the ability
> > to do anything he can't already do.  Or are you saying that the
> > program will be useless because most users won't have permissions to
> > do RPM installs?
> 
> 	There is a problem deciding who is allowed to install software.
> Users will want to download and install software.  They should be able to
> do this to a LIMITED extent in their home directories.  (They will
> anyway.)

Is users have a relocatable RPM package, they are welcome to
install it their own home directories.  RPM can handle that.

> However, I should be able to double-click on an RPM and have it
> install on the system.  This can be accomplished if the program asks me
> for the root password.  (This is how SGI handles the problem.)  So a
> dialog box might look like this:
> 
>  ----------------------------------------
> | Install gome-core 1.2.5-5435326?       |
> |----------------------------------------|
> |..... ..........                        |
> |Root | Yourself |                       |
> |----------------------------------------|
> | To install as root:                    |
> |                                        |
> | Enter Root Password: [               ] |
> |                                        |
> |     [Ok]                   [Cancel]    |
>  ----------------------------------------
>  ..........
> | Yourself |
>  ----------------------------------------
> | To install as yourself:                |
> |                                        |
> | Directory to install in: [/home/xkahn ]|
> |                                        |
> |     [Ok]                   [Cancel]    |
>  ----------------------------------------
> 
> 	or something like that anyway...  I can imagine a disk space
> required vs. disk space available display.  (Taking quota into account.)
> Etc.  Anyway, I think this can solve a lot of the problems I envision a
> instalation program causing.

This won't happen.  At least not in grpm.  It'd need to be suid root
to do that, and there is no way I'm going to do that :-).  If you
want to install as root, you'll need to su and then run grpm.  Or,
you can implement any policy you like with sudo.

-Marc