Many questions about translators

[Patrik Olsson]

To design HPM (Hurd Package Manager) I need answers to the following
questions (at least to begin with):

     1. Is it possible for an unprivileged user to override the
        translator of a node with another translator (at least, in their
        own view)? Basically, the question is if users' private HPM
        instances would also be able to have / as target when the system
        already has an HPM instance at that target (and thus the
        installed software would be from both the system HPM instance
        and the personal HPM instance, with the latter having
        priority). 
     2. If yes on question 1, would this be insecure? For example, if
        the user overrides a library used by a setuid program? (Then
        again, if the program is running as e.g. root by setuid, it
        wouldn't [at least shouldn't] see the files as the user does)
     3. Is it possible to have one translator working on two nodes at
        the same time (where the nodes have different meaning)? HPM
        needs to build one target directory (node one), and then have
        the interface directory where the user can control the manager
        (node two). 
     4. Is it possible for a translator to provide different views of
        the node for different users? For example, could each user have
        their own list of packages they want installed and the HPM
        translator would use ref-counting to install packages with
        ref-count > 0, and/or perhaps even make different packages
        appear installed for different users?

Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks.

/Patrik

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