root access required when installing linux programs on web hosting servers

[Paul King]

> 
> When your on a web hosting service(choose any), you do not get the root 
> password to the system.
> A large majority of linux programs(choose any) require root access when 
> installing them. (some do not require root access)
> 
> What are some workarounds for this common problem?
> 

I have worked on UNIX systems (as a client) since the 1980s when I had access 
as a university student, and I have never heard of any "fix" for this, and do 
not anticipate one in the offing. UNIXes have a rigid security policy, 
requiring, in problems like these, to ask the permission of the system operator 
if they could install your desired software and fix permissions accordingly so 
you can use it. If they say "no", you're out of luck.

If this were possible I would love to install a web-based mail server on my 
website, which generates email accounts for people, but all the ones I know of 
require root access at *some* part of the installation.

There are some software that, however, expects to install itself in a specific 
location so it knows where the libraries are in relation to itself. It would 
install itself someplace where you have no write permission, such as /bin, 
/usr/bin, and so on (really anything outside of your home directory and /tmp is 
generally off-limits). When this happened to me in installing Elvis (I think 
the BSD's vi that is on the system is too feature-poor), I found that it meant 
that I had to scour the source code and installation scripts to make sure that 
everything installed in my home directories. I gave up, thinking that I can 
live with BSD's vi, and installing Elvis was more trouble than it was worth.

The best thing I can tell you, if you are prepared to do a lot of work, and if 
you also have a generous allocation of disk space in your account, is to 
download the source, examine the Makefile to change the installation path, 
library paths (use absolute paths and not relative ones), and paths to 
installed libs. I think you are probably going to have to make related changes 
in the source code itself.

Paul King

--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists