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
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