As an aside to the beta install discussion, is it possible to install an RPM 
as an unprivileged user in Linux, in a way that it uses what's installed or 
tells you what needs updating? That would certainly make it easier for me to 
figure out when I upgrade something whether I can test code with local 
versions of stuff.

I.e., say I have a relatively complex system, and I want to test out a new 
version of MySQL. Is there a way to take the RPM and tell it to install 
things "locally" or "for one user", and have it put it in a non-privileged 
directory?  Will it look at current versions of packages, tell me what else 
it needs, etc etc?  Or does the package system really only work well for 
root, and installing locally needs you to basically compile it from sources?

I did some googling, but the answers I found are trying to be helpful 
without explaining how much pain is actually involved. Is it easier to set 
up a second machine than to have (say) two versions of Apache installed on 
the same machine?

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Why is there a chainsaw in DOOM?
   There aren't any trees on Mars.

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> As an aside to the beta install discussion, is it possible to install an RPM
> as an unprivileged user in Linux, in a way that it uses what's installed or
> tells you what needs updating?

Tough luck, I think.  It's really a centralized system for root.  However, you
may try this:

rpm -iv --relocate <oldpath>=<newdesiredpath> package.rpm

Since it's an unprivileged operation, I don't think it'll cause you much pain to
try it out. :)

It'll probably not work because it'll try to use and update the system-wide rpm
db.  So, you could copy such system-wide db (/var/rpmsomething?  I'm on
vacation and not on Linux right now) to some local dir and use that instead:

rpm -iv --dbpath <path> --relocate <oldpath>=<newdesiredpath> package.rpm

Worth a shot, I guess.  Of course, updates to the main db won't be reflected on
your local copy, but that's what happens to naughty boys not playing nice with
Linux standards... ;)

man rpm:
http://www.rt.com/man/rpm.8.html

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nemesis wrote:
> man rpm:
> http://www.rt.com/man/rpm.8.html

Thanks! I looked into the man page, and I guess I saw --dbpath and missed 
--relocate. I'll give that a go next time I need it and see how hard 
everything breaks. ;-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Why is there a chainsaw in DOOM?
   There aren't any trees on Mars.

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On Sun, 04 Jan 2009 21:07:42 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> nemesis wrote:
>> man rpm:
>> http://www.rt.com/man/rpm.8.html
> 
> Thanks! I looked into the man page, and I guess I saw --dbpath and
> missed --relocate. I'll give that a go next time I need it and see how
> hard everything breaks. ;-)

rpm2cpio might be useful as well - I use this occasionally to unpack an 
RPM to see what's in it or to extract one file I need for something else.

Jim

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> rpm2cpio might be useful as well - I use this occasionally to unpack an 
> RPM to see what's in it or to extract one file I need for something else.

  At least here 'less' (/usr/bin/less) will show the contents of packages
(such as rpms, tarballs (packed or not), etc.) as a listing of the files
inside. 'less' is very smart in that regard.

  (I know not all implementations of 'less' are that smart, and most of
them will simply show the raw contents of any file, but at least mine is.
It comes at least with OpenSUSE, probably also other distros.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:24:20 -0500, Warp wrote:

>   At least here 'less' (/usr/bin/less) will show the contents of
>   packages
> (such as rpms, tarballs (packed or not), etc.) as a listing of the files
> inside. 'less' is very smart in that regard.

Yes, that's because of the setting in the default shell environment of 
LESSOPEN which tells LESS how to deal with files with specific extensions.

But for me, I was extracting individual packages which is why I turned to 
rpm2cpio and then extracted with cpio.

Jim

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