using rpms for non-root installs

[Kevin Kofler]

Mátyás Selmeci wrote:
>     This may be a long shot, but I am interested in repackaging some
>     RPMs (for example, some of the Globus packages in EPEL, as well as
>     grid software that my group builds) such that the software in them
>     may be installed by unprivileged users, or into a non-standard
>     location such as an NFS share. I'd like to use existing RPMs,
>     preferably binaries, as a starting point to avoid duplicating work.
>     (Naturally a lot of post-install scripting would be needed to fix
>     binaries such that they'd work with the path they were installed
>     into).

For the "unprivileged users" part, it is possible for the admin to give out 
the org.freedesktop.packagekit.package-install PolicyKit permission, then 
users can install (but not remove) trusted packages (packages signed with 
GPG keys already known to the system) systemwide using gnome-packagekit or 
Apper. But of course, there are drawbacks to that, which is why it's not the 
default (in fact, it had been the default for a short moment in Fedora 12 
and got dropped due to user uproar), and so admins will generally not enable 
that, unfortunately. :-( In addition, it also only works for third-party 
repositories if the admin imported the key for them, and at that point he 
might as well install the packages, too. (There's also an 
org.freedesktop.packagekit.package-install-untrusted permission, but as an 
admin, you'd have to be insane to give that permission to your users, it's 
essentially the same as giving them root access, because they can craft any 
package running any arbitrary code and install it with that permission.) So 
in your case, it's not all that helpful, unfortunately. But I still wanted 
to point out the possibility.

        Kevin Kofler