On Fri, 2007-02-23 at 12:55 -0800, Michael A Peters wrote: > On Fri, 2007-02-23 at 14:22 -0500, Ric Moore wrote: > > I think it might be wise to consider the old Caldera notion of > > using /opt to contain all the goodies that you post install and wish to > > be left alone. Then you merely fresh install the core apps while > > leaving /opt (and /home /root) alone. It's worth a thought. Ric > > /opt should really only be used for self contained bundles. That is sideways what I was getting out. Suppose I wanted to install xmame and bunch of rom files. (arcade games) That could be considered a bundle that I don't want tampered with? > IE you could put something like TeXLive in /opt (and many universities > do just that) or Java in /opt etc. I put java there myself, I see your point. Great minds! > Often it is /opt/vendor/product/version - so that multiple *self > contained* versions can be parallel installed. > > If packages in /opt are installed by rpm then they need to use an rpm > database located on /opt that is not the system rpm database - at which > point, the benefits of using rpm pretty much disappear. A tarball with > an md5sum list is then more practical. > > What would be *nice* would be if you could say - > > rpm database A is system database. > rpm database B is /opt database. > > Packages in B can have their dependencies filled by A but packages > installed in A can NOT have their dependencies filled by packages in B. > > packages in B can not install files outside of /opt > Configuration option - packages in B can not install suid root binaries > (that's actually easy, both the outside of /opt and suid issue - > make /opt owned by a non root user that owns the rpm database and uses > rpm to install into that database - then the OS refuses to install suid > root files) Wow, you HAVE thought this through. > All that needs to happen for that to work now is rpm needs to be able to > check for dependency satisfaction in a database other than the target > database. I suppose library paths would be an issue for .so files - and > the users path would be an issue as well. IMHO that would be a saving grace for Fedora to do something like that. It would sure save what hair I have left. Ric -- ================================================ My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say: "There are two Great Sins in the world... ..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity. Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad. Linux user# 44256 Sign up at: http://counter.li.org/ http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/oar http://www.wayward4now.net ================================================
