"Eray Ozkural (exa)" wrote: > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Hi Jeff, > > On Thursday 17 January 2002 21:44, Jeff Licquia wrote: ... > > We cannot currently ensure that a package installing to /opt cannot > > overwrite admin-installed software there. > > > > Thanks for the explanation. That's a quite vague statement. How does one > modify or delete software ... without the assent of the local system > administrator? After all, it is the local system administrator who runs the > packaging commands. Theoretically, there isn't much difference between > running dpkg or rm. Moreover, if you consider the context of the above quote:
there is a big difference, when you use rm you tell it specific file(s) to delete, when you use dpkg you do NOT have control over individual files. > Distributions may install software in /opt, but should not modify or > delete software installed by the local system administrator without the > assent of the local system administrator. > > It would seem to imply for instance if I have installed a package foo in > /opt/foo, the system must not overwrite files in /opt/foo without my > knowledge. However, this paragraph doesn't seem to be very consistent to me > since distributions can be said to provide the "assent of local system > administrator" in any case... It's a matter of interpretation. not really. it means that software must provide a way for sysadmin to specify where to install stuff if it plans to install anything into /opt. erik