Package: mmdebstrap
Version: 0.4.1-6
Severity: wishlist
Hi Josch,
When you run mmdebstrap with --mode=chrootless and ask it to create a
tarball as an unprivileged user, the resulting tarball will have most
files (but /dev) owned by the unprivileged user. This is less than
ideal. Compare this to --mode=fakechroot. There mmdebstrap automatically
adds fakeroot, but not so for --mode=chrootless. A trivial workaround is
to run the whole mmdebstrap invocation inside fakeroot. I'm wondering
what should be done about this, if anything:
a) mmdebstrap should automatically enable fakeroot when it notices that
it is run unprivileged in chrootless mode and creates a tarball.
b) There should be a new mode for combining fakeroot and chrootless.
c) The manual page should tell the user to run mmdebstrap under
fakeroot. This last option also has the appeal that the user can
retain the permissions and apply further modifications in the same
fakeroot session before creating a tarball.
At this point, I'm slightly in favour of c). Let me propose the
following wording:
When run unprivileged, permissions will generally be wrong even when
creating a tarball. It is recommended to run mmdebstrap inside
fakeroot in this case.
What do you think?
Helmut
