[Fedora-livecd-list] Re: [Ovirt-devel] root access required?

[Jeremy Katz]

On Tue, 2008-09-09 at 15:22 +0100, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> 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

Given that you're installing arbitrary packages and then running scripts
for livecd-tools, just use sudo.

And doing something like fakeroot doesn't work because just
"remembering" the changed owners isn't good enough -- they actually need
to be changed on the filesystem so that the resulting filesystem (that
you boot and use as a normal system) has the correct ownership, selinux
xattrs and permissions.

Jeremy