FS#8930 - pacman -Sup : you cannot perform this operation unless you are root + more general feature request
Attached to Project:
Pacman
Opened by Nagy Gabor (combo) - Friday, 14 December 2007, 23:02 GMT
Last edited by Aaron Griffin (phrakture) - Friday, 14 December 2007, 23:24 GMT
Opened by Nagy Gabor (combo) - Friday, 14 December 2007, 23:02 GMT
Last edited by Aaron Griffin (phrakture) - Friday, 14 December 2007, 23:24 GMT
|
Details
Well, I hope this is not a duplicated task, I've read this
somewhere, but I cannot find it now.
I've told everything in the subject. I would like to present here a possible solution, I hope this won't be off here: I would like to ask more: simply remove this "are you root?" thing from pacman: 1. for example dpkg doesn't do this check neither (<- dpkg is not as good as pacman, but that is not bad neither;-), so this probably "works". 2. this leads some annoying bugs (like this) 3. this is a not a security protection at all: if "evil user" wants to install something, he can simply compile and use a no-root-check patched pacman, or do terrible things in /var/lib/pacman by hand, IF your system is weak (i.e. he has the required file/dir _permissions_) -- pacman is just a little "helper utility". 4. our code would be a bit cleaner [Imho the only "acceptable" reason for doing non-root check: we cannot rollback transactions now (for example, ngaba user can write /opt on my machine), and this helps us avoiding some pacman created spam on HDD, but] 5. all transactions start with db lock, non-root user shouldn't be able to do this 6. well, why don't we let non-root users to "play" with pacman, someone may want to create a database in his home directory, or install packages to his pendrive (not really real life examples, but why not?) |
This task depends upon
Closed by Aaron Griffin (phrakture)
Friday, 14 December 2007, 23:24 GMT
Reason for closing: Duplicate
Additional comments about closing: Dupe of #8905,
please one report per bug or FR. Mixing them like this is just confusing
Friday, 14 December 2007, 23:24 GMT
Reason for closing: Duplicate
Additional comments about closing: Dupe of #8905,
please one report per bug or FR. Mixing them like this is just confusing