[CentOS] yum relocatable RPMs

Lamar Owen lowen at pari.edu
Mon Aug 27 14:11:15 UTC 2012


On Sunday, August 26, 2012 09:51:27 AM Rita wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I dont have root access but I would like to install several packages (gtk)
> in my home directory. Is it possible to install it via yum ?

In a nutshell, yes, it should be possible.  It will be complicated, and might even be very complicated, but it actually sounds like a 'different from normal' application of mock or mock's predecessor, 'mach'.  This is not the only way to do this sort of thing, but if you want to use yum to do the install.....  

I do not have a specific procedure, but I can point you to a rather interesting document about running a Debian userland on top of SuSE linux at: http://www.network-crawler.de/index.php/Debian_within_SuSE (as a note, I learned about this even being possible at http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=16725842&p=7344235#p7344235 and then googled from there....).

This uses chroot to do its magic.  (seems I've read this really recently on another list..... :-) ).

There are limits to how far you can take this, but that document is a start at understanding the mechanics that make it work, and for what you want to do, if using yum is a requirement, this may be the way to do it (just not using Debian on SuSE, but something RPM-based on CentOS).

The other recommendation of installing things via tarball is quite a bit simpler to set up, but will be more complicated to maintain and update over time.



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