[Ovirt-devel] root access required?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Mon, Sep 08, 2008 at 12:03:21PM -0400, Perry N. Myers wrote:
> Ben Guthro wrote:
>> In my endeavor to set up a build environment for our developers  
>> experimenting with oVirt / libvirt, I have come across a general 
>> dislike that the build of the ovirt managed node requires the user to 
>> be root.
[...]
> The dependency on needing root is inherited from livecd-tools.  So for us 
> to remove root as a requirement for building this needs to be changed  
> upstream.  I'd start by posting questions/requests to the livecd mailing  
> lists and see if the developers there can easily fix this.
>
> Once root is not longer required for livecd-tools, we will be able to  
> build everything in ovirt as non-root.

I would also LOVE to see livecd-creator not needing root.  Has anyone
talked to the livecd developers about this (email CC'd)?  I can't find
any recent discussion on their mailing list about it though.

Mock does this by having a C helper program called, creatively,
'mock-helper' which does all the SUID operations needed on behalf of
mock.  The result is obviously very successful for them.

Here is the source for mock-helper:

  http://annexia.org/tmp/mock-helper.c.txt

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Emerging Technologies, Red Hat  http://et.redhat.com/~rjones
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