From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jun 28 18:54:20 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CC38716A41C for ; Tue, 28 Jun 2005 18:54:20 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from pi.codefab.com (pi.codefab.com [199.103.21.227]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 982F843D1F for ; Tue, 28 Jun 2005 18:54:20 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pi.codefab.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id F26ED5D66; Tue, 28 Jun 2005 14:54:19 -0400 (EDT) Received: from pi.codefab.com ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (pi.codefab.com [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 22872-04; Tue, 28 Jun 2005 14:54:10 -0400 (EDT) Received: from [192.168.1.3] (pool-68-161-54-113.ny325.east.verizon.net [68.161.54.113]) by pi.codefab.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 59B935C93; Tue, 28 Jun 2005 14:54:10 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <42C19CD3.2000208@mac.com> Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 14:54:11 -0400 From: Chuck Swiger Organization: The Courts of Chaos User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: brian.barto@spectrum-health.org References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at codefab.com Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Install ports as non-root user? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 18:54:20 -0000 brian.barto@spectrum-health.org wrote: > Hi all. I'm looking to make a non-privileged user the owner of all my > software so I don't have to act as root when installing, configuring, and > updating software. Furthermore, I won't have to give out the root password > to others who need rights to configure software. I noticed my ports > collection is entirely owned by root and requires root to install. Is there > a way to install ports as a non-root user or allow non-root users to install > ports? You can checkout the ports collection as a normal user (via CVS or CVSup, or copy or chown a /usr/ports owned by root). You will need to set $PORTSDIR appropriately, and you can also set $LOCALBASE to point to a place owned by the user where the ports should be installed to. However, a fair number of important ports require root access to create users or setuid binaries, and some ports have bugs when the paths are changed from the defaults, so be prepared for problems. -- -Chuck