how to get a specfile from an RPM

[Andy Green]

Somebody in the thread at some point said:

> than the others suggested. I consider working with RPMs to be a root
> thing so it would never occur to me to try to build rpms as a normal
> user. I can't see how they wold ever install correctly.

AIUI rpmbuild simply puts the desired uids into the cpio archive to
control the uid on them when they're unpacked... at no point does it
need to 'be' that uid at build time.  It just says, "yep, unpack this as
root:root, here's the file..." as it creates the cpio archive, all as
the build user.  The *unpack* guy has to be root to live up to the uids
specified in the archive is all.

Things can easily go horribly wrong using rpmbuild as root, allowing the
package to take a dump on your real filesystem as it builds.

-Andy