Marius Gedminas wrote: > On Mon, Feb 12, 2007 at 08:13:47PM +0000, Neil MacLeod wrote: >> Richard Pickler wrote: >>> The second time, I was installing some packages I built myself, and it >>> crashed, which I could not recover from. (this one I'll take the blame >>> for). >> Why should you take the blame? This is a consumer oriented device and >> software installation is promoted as a user feature - it should not brick >> the device, period! > > I'm pretty sure you can install apps from the tableteer certified > repository without bricking the device. > > It's impossible to prevent packages from other repositories from doing > so. Package installation can runs arbitrary scripts as root, and you > can't prevent root from destroying a Linux system. (Well, maybe if you > lock it down with capabilities/SELinux/something else, but it's hard to > do so without making unable to do anything useful.) > Why? On the tablet you just install apps. Why should the installer need to be root to do so? A properly configured device (as it should have been) should NEVER ask for root permissions. All programs just copy their own executables and write their own configuration in a file. It can be made in a user writable directory (perhaps in the memory card too [see below]). Same holds for libraries. I can think of very few .debs (if any) that need to be installed by root on a tablet. Speaking about installing apps on the MMC, it would be very easy too. I am sure the Maemo Team was faced with such an option and they had to choose between partitioning the SD/MMC (as VFAT can cause a few issues with apps execution, and the apps themselves should deal with execution and configuration files in an unusual path [many do]) or giving away with this option. The chose the latter. May be they just postponed it as they would have needed to deal with some stuff, for example what to do if you remove/install an SD (the menu should catch the D-BUS event and remove the external apps from the list and should add them back when the card is inserted and stuff like that). But I am sure it would be perfectly feasible and very useful too (the dpkg utility allows it). -- anidel
