On 3/12/07, Jim Perrin jperrin@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/12/07, Alfred von Campe alfred@110.net wrote:
I was just going to report these myself. Anyway, I am on the final step at the moment (the RPM is being built). But I have a couple of questions regarding this process of building a custom kernel:
- Why is it not a good idea to build a custom kernel
as root (you have to be root to install it)?Building as root is bad practice for all software. This is mostly to protect you from bad code. If a cleanup script tries to delete / instead of just the buildroot, you'll be in a world of hurt by building as root. By building as a normal/restricted user you reduce the permissions available to the code, thereby minimizing potential damage.
And that is the critical type of problems (i.e. removing /). Subtler issues can occur also if the build scriptlets install files, or change configs your build system becomes polluted.
Cheers...james