Easy "Add/Remove Porgrams" for non-sudoers with local PREFIX?

[Carsten Agger]

Like in many packages, you can say

./configure PREFIX=~/bin

you'll install the package locally and don't need to be superuser. Are
there any plans to integrate this functionality with synaptic/Add-Remove
for non-sudoers, or am I missing something?

br
Carsten

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Re: Easy "Add/Remove Porgrams" for non-sudoers with local PREFIX?

[Mackenzie Morgan]

You'd have to have special packages for local and for system-wide.
./configure is during compile, not during installation, so you'd have to
compile twice for each package to have one that goes in ~

On Dec 20, 2007 11:24 AM, Carsten Agger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Like in many packages, you can say
>
> ./configure PREFIX=~/bin
>
> you'll install the package locally and don't need to be superuser. Are
> there any plans to integrate this functionality with synaptic/Add-Remove
> for non-sudoers, or am I missing something?
>
> br
> Carsten
>
> --
> http://www.modspil.dk
>
>
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Re: Easy "Add/Remove Porgrams" for non-sudoers with local PREFIX?

[Carsten Agger]

Mackenzie Morgan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> You´d have to have special packages for local and for system-wide.
> ./configure is during compile, not during installation, so you´d have
> to compile twice for each package to have one that goes in ~
>

Yes, that might be a problem - a solution might be to grab the source
code when installing to ~ and then compile on-the-fly - which will, of
course, make installation take a bit longer, especially on older/slower
machines.

Still, I think the inability to easily install locally, without using
sudo (and without bothering other users) is a usability problem -
however, if the directory/path structure is laid down at compile time,
it may not be easy to come up with a satisfactory solution.

I still think it'd be a very nice feature to have, though - allow people
to have the Add/Remove goodness even without being sudoers - it would be
a huge improvement in all many-user environments.

br
Carsten
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Re: Easy "Add/Remove Porgrams" for non-sudoers with local PREFIX?

[Carsten Agger]

Carsten Agger wrote:
> Mackenzie Morgan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
>> You´d have to have special packages for local and for system-wide.
>> ./configure is during compile, not during installation, so you´d have
>> to compile twice for each package to have one that goes in ~
>>
> 
> Yes, that might be a problem - a solution might be to grab the source
> code when installing to ~ and then compile on-the-fly - which will, of
> course, make installation take a bit longer, especially on older/slower
> machines.
> 
> Still, I think the inability to easily install locally, without using
> sudo (and without bothering other users) is a usability problem -
> however, if the directory/path structure is laid down at compile time,
> it may not be easy to come up with a satisfactory solution.
> 
> I still think it'd be a very nice feature to have, though - allow people
> to have the Add/Remove goodness even without being sudoers - it would be
> a huge improvement in all many-user environments.
> 

Anyway, I know that Mark Shuttleworth recently said that such
suggestions are much more welcome from "people with patches" than from
"people with demands", however of course it wasn't meant as much as a
demand as a suggestion - being able to easily install programs without
having admin rights where not needed *would* be a good idea, I think. I
*might* have a go at a patch, however this would have to be after the
holidays ...

so Happy Holidays, everyone

br
Carsten
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Re: Easy "Add/Remove Porgrams" for non-sudoers with local PREFIX?

[Jason Crain]

Mackenzie Morgan wrote:
> You'd have to have special packages for local and for system-wide.  
> ./configure is during compile, not during installation, so you'd have 
> to compile twice for each package to have one that goes in ~
>
> On Dec 20, 2007 11:24 AM, Carsten Agger <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> > wrote:
>
> Like in many packages, you can say
>
> ./configure PREFIX=~/bin
>
> you'll install the package locally and don't need to be superuser. Are
> there any plans to integrate this functionality with
> synaptic/Add-Remove
> for non-sudoers, or am I missing something?
> 
>

The problem seems to be that programs will look for their files in /etc 
and /usr/share.  You could do something similar to what fakeroot does.  
Load a library that wraps open and stat system calls.  You could then 
check for files in ~/.user_root before looking in the real root.  Then 
programs wouldn't have to be recompiled.  Though, it would take a 
miracle to keep this from breaking some programs...

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Re: Easy "Add/Remove Porgrams" for non-sudoers with local PREFIX?

[Markus Hitter]

Am 22.12.2007 um 06:18 schrieb Jason Crain:

> Mackenzie Morgan wrote:
>> You'd have to have special packages for local and for system-wide.
>> ./configure is during compile, not during installation, so you'd have
>> to compile twice for each package to have one that goes in ~

For some packages, especially the bigger ones, this is true  
(hardcoded paths etc.). Many other packages, however, run whereever  
you unpack them.

> The problem seems to be that programs will look for their files in / 
> etc
> and /usr/share.

In a multiuser environment, this is perfectly fine. As far as I  
understood the original poster, non-root packages are not meant to  
set up some sandboxing or virtualisation, but to respect privilege  
restrictions: read, but not write access to everything outside $HOME.

Another use for non-root packages would be to override other  
packages: For example, install gcc-4.1 system wide but put in gcc-4.2  
for Mr. Developer.


Markus

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Re: Easy "Add/Remove Porgrams" for non-sudoers with local PREFIX?

[Reinhard Tartler]

Carsten Agger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Like in many packages, you can say
>
> ./configure PREFIX=~/bin
>
> you'll install the package locally and don't need to be superuser. Are
> there any plans to integrate this functionality with synaptic/Add-Remove
> for non-sudoers, or am I missing something?

http://0install.net/ should do exactly what you want.

Note that there are no plans to actively support or promote this in
ubuntu.

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Reinhard Tartler, KeyID 945348A4

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Re: Easy "Add/Remove Porgrams" for non-sudoers with local PREFIX?

[Hugo Heden]

On Dec 24, 2007 2:44 PM, Reinhard Tartler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Carsten Agger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> > Like in many packages, you can say
> >
> > ./configure PREFIX=~/bin
> >
> > you'll install the package locally and don't need to be superuser. Are
> > there any plans to integrate this functionality with synaptic/Add-Remove
> > for non-sudoers, or am I missing something?
>
> http://0install.net/ should do exactly what you want.
>
> Note that there are no plans to actively support or promote this in
> ubuntu.
>

There other attempts (if I understand all this correctly?) to solve
the Linux Software Installation Problem (LSIP)[1], of which the
installing-software-as-non-root is part.

o) Glick: http://www.gnome.org/~alexl/glick/ (promising but project is
currently both young and inactive -- pretty much just a little
experiment?)

o) klik: http://klik.atekon.de/ and
http://klik.atekon.de/wiki/index.php/Klik2 (promising and active. They
have a lot of thinking going on regarding the difference between the
"base system" and "applications". However, AFAIK the solution seems to
depend on a central server for software, which I think is a weakness
-- software vendors should be able to bundle and publish the software
themselves -- the most fundamental part of the LSIP)

o) CNR (Click aNd Run): http://cnr.com/

o) And of course, there is getdeb.net, but AFAIK they do not attempt
to solve the installing-software-as-non-root part of the LSIP.

A little off topic: For more on the LSIP, see Ian Murdocks blog post
"Software installation on Linux: Today, it sucks" --
http://ianmurdock.com/?p=388 -- and the rather more hopeful follow-up
on http://ianmurdock.com/?p=391 .


Best regards
Hugo Heden

[1] "LSIP": Ok, ok, I just made that acronym up (to make the point
that I seriously think the concept is worth an acronym -- IMHO this
needs to be worked on in order to fix Bug #1. I've been lurking on
this list for a year, and I am a little concerned that there is so
little talk about this.)

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Re: Easy "Add/Remove Porgrams" for non-sudoers with local PREFIX?

[Hugo Heden]

On Dec 25, 2007 12:52 AM, Hugo Heden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Dec 24, 2007 2:44 PM, Reinhard Tartler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Carsten Agger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> >
> > > Like in many packages, you can say
> > >
> > > ./configure PREFIX=~/bin
> > >
> > > you'll install the package locally and don't need to be superuser. Are
> > > there any plans to integrate this functionality with synaptic/Add-Remove
> > > for non-sudoers, or am I missing something?
> >
> > http://0install.net/ should do exactly what you want.
> >
> > Note that there are no plans to actively support or promote this in
> > ubuntu.
> >
>
> There other attempts (if I understand all this correctly?) to solve
> the Linux Software Installation Problem (LSIP)[1], of which the
> installing-software-as-non-root is part.
>
> o) Glick: http://www.gnome.org/~alexl/glick/ (promising but project is
> currently both young and inactive -- pretty much just a little
> experiment?)
>
> o) klik: http://klik.atekon.de/ and
> http://klik.atekon.de/wiki/index.php/Klik2 (promising and active. They
> have a lot of thinking going on regarding the difference between the
> "base system" and "applications". However, AFAIK the solution seems to
> depend on a central server for software, which I think is a weakness
> -- software vendors should be able to bundle and publish the software
> themselves -- the most fundamental part of the LSIP)
>
> o) CNR (Click aNd Run): http://cnr.com/
>
> o) And of course, there is getdeb.net, but AFAIK they do not attempt
> to solve the installing-software-as-non-root part of the LSIP.
>
> A little off topic: For more on the LSIP, see Ian Murdocks blog post
> "Software installation on Linux: Today, it sucks" --
> http://ianmurdock.com/?p=388 -- and the rather more hopeful follow-up
> on http://ianmurdock.com/?p=391 .
>
>
> Best regards
> Hugo Heden
>
> [1] "LSIP": Ok, ok, I just made that acronym up (to make the point
> that I seriously think the concept is worth an acronym -- IMHO this
> needs to be worked on in order to fix Bug #1. I've been lurking on
> this list for a year, and I am a little concerned that there is so
> little talk about this.)
>

Oh, let me stress that I do *not* think the situation is any better
with MS Windows, that was *not* the point I was making. I am only
occasionally using MS Windows, and don't really know much about it.
(The latter is also true for Linux.)

Also, there was a short discussion about the LSIP on the Ubuntu Forums
a year ago that I liked:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=330430 . But this is perhaps
getting too off topic.

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Re: Easy "Add/Remove Porgrams" for non-sudoers with local PREFIX?

[Denis Washington]

On Tue, 2007-12-25 at 00:52 +0100, Hugo Heden wrote:
> On Dec 24, 2007 2:44 PM, Reinhard Tartler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Carsten Agger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> >
> > > Like in many packages, you can say
> > >
> > > ./configure PREFIX=~/bin
> > >
> > > you'll install the package locally and don't need to be superuser. Are
> > > there any plans to integrate this functionality with synaptic/Add-Remove
> > > for non-sudoers, or am I missing something?
> >
> > http://0install.net/ should do exactly what you want.
> >
> > Note that there are no plans to actively support or promote this in
> > ubuntu.
> >
> 
> There other attempts (if I understand all this correctly?) to solve
> the Linux Software Installation Problem (LSIP)[1], of which the
> installing-software-as-non-root is part.
> 
> o) Glick: http://www.gnome.org/~alexl/glick/ (promising but project is
> currently both young and inactive -- pretty much just a little
> experiment?)

AFAIK it was just an experiment.

> o) klik: http://klik.atekon.de/ and
> http://klik.atekon.de/wiki/index.php/Klik2 (promising and active. They
> have a lot of thinking going on regarding the difference between the
> "base system" and "applications". However, AFAIK the solution seems to
> depend on a central server for software, which I think is a weakness
> -- software vendors should be able to bundle and publish the software
> themselves -- the most fundamental part of the LSIP)

klik has a central repository, but doesn't depend on it. One can easily
host their files at arbitrary places and point klik to the appropiate
URL.

> o) CNR (Click aNd Run): http://cnr.com/
> 
> o) And of course, there is getdeb.net, but AFAIK they do not attempt
> to solve the installing-software-as-non-root part of the LSIP.
> 
> A little off topic: For more on the LSIP, see Ian Murdocks blog post
> "Software installation on Linux: Today, it sucks" --
> http://ianmurdock.com/?p=388 -- and the rather more hopeful follow-up
> on http://ianmurdock.com/?p=391 .
> 
> 
> Best regards
> Hugo Heden
> 
> [1] "LSIP": Ok, ok, I just made that acronym up (to make the point
> that I seriously think the concept is worth an acronym -- IMHO this
> needs to be worked on in order to fix Bug #1. I've been lurking on
> this list for a year, and I am a little concerned that there is so
> little talk about this.)

You may be interested in the discussion about application bundles in the
LSB packaging list [1]. It's currently not very active (hey, it's
christmas ;) ), but there has been posted a lot already, so you might
want to look into the archives of the last two months.

Regards,
Denis

[1] https://lists.linux-foundation.org/mailman/listinfo/packaging/


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Re: Easy "Add/Remove Porgrams" for non-sudoers with local PREFIX?

[Carsten Agger]

Reinhard Tartler wrote:
> Carsten Agger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
>> Like in many packages, you can say
>>
>> ./configure PREFIX=~/bin
>>
>> you'll install the package locally and don't need to be superuser. Are
>> there any plans to integrate this functionality with synaptic/Add-Remove
>> for non-sudoers, or am I missing something?
> 
> http://0install.net/ should do exactly what you want.
> 
> Note that there are no plans to actively support or promote this in
> ubuntu.
> 

Is there any reason for this - I mean, is the use case of a non-root
user wishing to install software and still using "standard" utilities
like "Add/Remove Programs" considered insignificant? Has there already
been discussions abt this and in that case, do you remember he arguments
for and against?

(Having utilities like 0install is great, but I was also thinking about
the overall userfriendliness of Ubuntu, and making it easy for non-root
users to install e.g. games from the universe repositories without
bothering the admin and without having to know how to recompile from
scratch seems like an essential use case for me.

Anyway,
thanks for the answer :-)

br
Carsten

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Re: Easy "Add/Remove Porgrams" for non-sudoers with local PREFIX?

[Kevin Fries]

On Thu, 2008-01-03 at 18:20 +0100, Carsten Agger wrote:
> Is there any reason for this - I mean, is the use case of a non-root
> user wishing to install software and still using "standard" utilities
> like "Add/Remove Programs" considered insignificant? Has there already
> been discussions abt this and in that case, do you remember he arguments
> for and against?
> 
> (Having utilities like 0install is great, but I was also thinking about
> the overall userfriendliness of Ubuntu, and making it easy for non-root
> users to install e.g. games from the universe repositories without
> bothering the admin and without having to know how to recompile from
> scratch seems like an essential use case for me.

What you are bucking against is Linux Philosophy more than a technical
problem.  Lets see if I can explain this without starting a flame war.

One of the concepts of Linux (and modern Macs) is the concept of a
separation of preferences versus system administration.  Microsoft does
not have that separation, and this is the cause of much of their
security "issues".  Linux avoids much of that by defining two areas of
configuration, system and user.

User configurations are items that only affect the logged in user
experience.  These items are things such as Colors, icons, window
decorations, email preferences, etc.  These are set on a user by user
basis, and are stored in ~/.program directories.  Configuring these
settings is done via the System->Preferences menu.

System configurations are items that effect users system wide.
Available network configurations, Printers, and software available
generally fall into this category.  The configurations for these items
generally exist in /etc folder, and are graphically configured via the
System->Administration menu.

Some items fall into a great abyss of uncertainty.  For example, WEP
information.  If I put up a wireless network at my office, and have a
laptop that several people use, should the key be configured globally?
However, being a laptop, authentication of multiple networks is
probable, and can not be administered globally.  Its a system wide
service (wireless networking), but needs to be configured on a user by
user basis.  These gray areas have never been Linux's strong suit.

When it comes to software available though, most of this comes from a
historical perspective of centrally administered machines.  In the old
days (20 computer years = 1 human year, so the old days are not all that
long ago, lol) most Unix based machines were shared among several users.
All software was centrally installed and configured.  If a user wanted,
they could always install a custom program into their own ~/ folder.
Some Unixes actually placed ~/bin in their execution path.  Its this
history that you are bucking right now.

Having this separation has actually helped the Nixes to avoid the virus
problems of the Windows environment.  Because end users can only install
software to their own directory, they can not infect the core of the OS
with a virus.  Because of the elevated privileges required, software can
not install automatically like it does in say ActiveX.  While the
practice of having admins do all installs was to keep some sanity in a
machine with multiple users, it is this security reason more than any
other as to why installs remain the realm of the admin.

Modern Nix based systems have a wonderful tool called SUDO that makes
getting around this issue extremely easy.  If you want someone to be
able to admin your box, add them to the admin group on any Ubuntu based
system.  Then they have sudo access to any root command.  If you want to
allow non-root users to be able to install software, that is easy also:

  - Create a group call swinstall
  - In your /etc/sudoers file add the following line:
  %swinstall ALL = /usr/bin/update-manager
  - Add any user you wish to have software install access to the
swinstall group.

Hope this helps

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Re: Easy "Add/Remove Porgrams" for non-sudoers with local PREFIX?

[Milan]

Kevin Fries a écrit :
> 
> Modern Nix based systems have a wonderful tool called SUDO that makes
> getting around this issue extremely easy.  If you want someone to be
> able to admin your box, add them to the admin group on any Ubuntu based
> system.  Then they have sudo access to any root command.  If you want to
> allow non-root users to be able to install software, that is easy also:
>
>   - Create a group call swinstall
>   - In your /etc/sudoers file add the following line:
>   %swinstall ALL = /usr/bin/update-manager
>   - Add any user you wish to have software install access to the
> swinstall group.
>
> Hope this helps
>   
I should add that in Hardy we should have an even nicer system called
PolicyKit that will allow you to set many fine-tuned permissions, like
"user x is allowed to install packages from the standard repositories,
but not to uninstall any package and not do administrate anything else",
etc. So this will be nice to avoid the ugly (from my point of view)
hacks to install packages in ~. Our current way of managing packages is
very robust and much more secure, if we don't want to end up like Windows.

Cheers

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Re: Easy "Add/Remove Porgrams" for non-sudoers with local PREFIX?

[Mackenzie Morgan]

On Jan 5, 2008 8:59 AM, Milan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> I should add that in Hardy we should have an even nicer system called
> PolicyKit that will allow you to set many fine-tuned permissions, like
> "user x is allowed to install packages from the standard repositories,
> but not to uninstall any package and not do administrate anything else",
> etc. So this will be nice to avoid the ugly (from my point of view)
> hacks to install packages in ~. Our current way of managing packages is
> very robust and much more secure, if we don't want to end up like Windows.
>

Oh, that should be very nice.  I'd like to be able to allow my family to
install programs and updates but not remove anything (in case they break
it).  Right now, my siblings have full permissions (attempting to get them
used to using it since they said they want to use Ubuntu on their laptops
when they go to college), and my mom has just about none at all (she's
afraid to right-click...I figure if I tell her "you can't break it" she
might be a bit more likely to try new things and learn how it works than if
she's constantly fearing the whole thing will crash or explode or something
if she clicks the wrong button).

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