Re: Bug#2091: creating packages requires root privileges
Marek Michalkiewicz writes (Bug#2091: creating packages requires root privileges): To create a binary *.deb package, root privileges are required. This is because you must create a complete directory structure with proper ownerships and permissions first, and then use dpkg-deb to create a package from it. Unfortunately there's not much that can be done about this, because most packages are created by running the package's own Makefile to install the files. This doesn't work (or fails to DTRT) if you're not root. I have no plans to improve this situatioon; I think the simplest solution would be a way to mount a part of a filesystem in a way that means user uid is root for here. You'd want to mount it with nosuid,nodev of course. Then the filesystem could be used to record the chmod's c done by the package build Makefiles and get them into the .deb file. If someone else wants to write a program that makes .deb files some other way then they should feel free. They'll probably want to make the `new format' archives the default - see the dpkg-deb source for details. I'm closing this bug report. Ian.
Bug#2091: creating packages requires root privileges
Package: dpkg To create a binary *.deb package, root privileges are required. This is because you must create a complete directory structure with proper ownerships and permissions first, and then use dpkg-deb to create a package from it. But this should't really be necessary. A tar file is a tar file, and you can set any permissions inside it if you can write to it. The only thing that is necessary is a program to set permissions inside tar files. This looks more like a suggestion than a bug report to me... If you're creating a Debian package you need to be root on the system you're going to install it on to test it. Even if you're using some shared environment in which you don't have root on the main development machine, is it really that problematic to make the `binary' target on the test machine? However, I haven't tried to build Debian packages in that sort of environment, so there may be gotchas I'm missing. A tool which could adjust permissions and ownership of the contents of a tar file shouldn't be hard to write; you'd still have to get the tar file back into the deb archive, of course. -- Richard Kettlewell [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.elmail.co.uk/staff/richard/
Bug#2091: creating packages requires root privileges
If you're creating a Debian package you need to be root on the system you're going to install it on to test it. Even if you're using some shared environment in which you don't have root on the main development machine, is it really that problematic to make the `binary' target on the test machine? It isn't _that_ problematic, but it is inconvenient, and technically not necessary. It isn't that problematic to transfer a few files using FTP, but it is often a lot more convenient to use NFS :-). Besides, it is generally recommended to do most things as an ordinary user, and use root only if really necessary. A tool which could adjust permissions and ownership of the contents of a tar file shouldn't be hard to write; you'd still have to get the tar file back into the deb archive, of course. Or modify dpkg-deb to read a file (part of the source package) which specifies permissions of all files, and modify the intermediate tar archive while creating the package. I'm not sure about dpkg internals... Even if there is no intermediate tar file (output from tar is piped to gzip), it should still be possible to write a filter that reads a tar archive from stdin, changes the permissions to these specifed in the permissions file, and writes the modified tar archive to stdout (pipe to gzip in this case). Tar files are, by their nature (tape archive), sequential - no random read/write access should be required to do this. The package-specific permissions file could also be installed somewhere in /var/lib/dpkg/... and later used to verify that the permissions are correct, and fix them without reinstalling if they ever get messed up. Probably the biggest problem: find someone to write the program to change permissions inside tar files. Any tar file format experts out there? Marek
