Sukrit K Mehra rearranged electrons thusly:
> if the package is in form of something.tar.gz then one does have the option of
> installing on /usr/local/
> then why not with rpm?
rpms have hardcoded install paths in them - and precompiled binaries (which
might also have hardcoded paths to the various library directories etc).
You *can* use midnight commander to extract files from an rpm and dump them
where you please, but there's no guarantee that this will work.
> Which distro doesn't have this rpm thingee?
> debian???
Yeah. Slackware doesn't use 'em either. I think the only (mainstream) RPM
based distros are Redhat, SuSe, Mandrake and Caldera.
> You mean to tell me a user can't install a package?
> Why it then a user can install if that package is in form of a tar ball?
Well, for instance you need write permissions ...
mjollnir:~ ls -ld /usr
drwxr-xr-x 18 root root 4096 Dec 19 06:06 /usr/
mjollnir:~ ls -ld /usr/local
drwxr-xr-x 15 root root 4096 Feb 1 10:01 /usr/local/
mjollnir:~ ls -ld /usr/lib
drwxr-xr-x 61 root root 32768 Feb 9 19:41 /usr/lib/
With a tarball, you *can* install the stuff in your homedirectory (./configure
-PREFIX=/home/username and other stuff - ./configure --help for more). I used
to run a newer version of mutt in my homedir at my previous workplace, where we
used to share access to a set of solaris boxes and my sysadmin refused to
install a newer version than 0.95.6i (which had a date header bug) - that'd
have necessiated all sorts of bureaucracy, duplication across all the servers
here and at the NYC / Boston offices etc etc :(
You cannot, however, install into /usr/local / /usr - or else there are lots of
security implications as well.
--suresh
--
Suresh Ramasubramanian <--> mallet <at> efn <dot> org
EMail Sturmbannfuhrer, Lower Middle Class Unix Sysadmin
"What separates normal people from kooks is how they react when people disagree
with them or tell them "NO" <-- Ron Ritzman on news.admin.net-abuse.email
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