Marius Vollmer wrote: > "ext Aniello Del Sorbo" <anidel at gmail.com> writes: > >> I still don't understand why this cannot be done in an easy way from >> the maemo team. > > Patches are welcome! :-) > It would be nice to :) > It is not completely straighforward to use dpkg and apt-get with mixed > users, but it might not be that difficult either. You would need to > make sure that they can still maintain their databases and caches, > etc. > I know it not straightforward, I said easy, not "it's there, just activate it". I am aware there would be issue and something would need a rethink. But I am quite confident it could be done. dpkg and whatever other app that install application on the device can be executed by root, but they can run the pre/post/during/you_name_it-install script as 'user'. If they are not though already like that, I do not welcome patching the dpkg itself. I am not a dpkg guru, but I will take a look at it. Who knows if they already thought about this scenario. After all it makes sense also on a regular desktop. > But, increasing the robustness of the device is a much more subtle > issue than not installing packages as root. Not installing packages > as root doesn't give you much protection against accidents. (Not > _running_ them as root does, on the other hand.) > Yes. > You will also need to prevent applications from doing harm at > run-time, for example. What good is it when an application has not > been installed as root but still deletes all your image files by > accident? Or a statusbar plugin consumes so much memory at a steady > rate that the device reboots after 10 minutes? You could make a > distinction between applications that you allow to modify your files > (all files, or just some?) and other that are just alloed to read them > (really? maybe you should not let them read your honey moon > pictures). > That's a different matter. Badly conceived apps can still and will cause damage. No matter how are they ran. > I think that way lies madness. > :) -- anidel
