Re: fakeroot inquiry

[Marcus Brinkmann]

Hi,

I am moving this thread to the bug-hurd list.  Please only reply to
that.

On Fri, May 03, 2002 at 06:46:02AM +0200, Robert Millan wrote:
> I was thinking of a hurdish alternative to fakeroot. What we need is
> just a way of chown files to any user without having root proviledges.

Well, we do have "boot" which is a more complete solution.  It boots
a complete new Hurd system in which you are root.  Of course, this is
a bit heavy.

Maybe it would work to use a proxy auth server, that would be used
by your ext2fs and that calls the auth_Server_authenticate RPC on the
system auth server.  In the reply to your ext2fs, it simply adds the
root id to the auth handles.  Voila, you have a faked root, and ext2fs
will allow you all ownership manipulations.  This does not require
any change to ext2fs, but to auth.  The advantage is that this will work
with any server you care about.

> Well, IMHO a good solution is to hack ext2fs to allow that. Maybe
> with a special option and starting it dinamicaly with a "fakeroot"
> script. I need to think about this.
> 

I think that hacking ext2fs (well, actually one of the libraries)
would work, but it would not be an elegant hurdish solution.

Thanks,
Marcus