On Tue, 20 Jan 2004, Christopher Thom wrote: >> Anyway, I do not have root access rights and I was wondering if it is >> still possible to update XFree and if so, how do I proceed? Help would >> be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. > >I don't know how redhat deals with user-installed packages, but it is >highly unlikely that you'll be able to install this without being root. >And given the update instructions require you to upgrade packages to meet >dependencies, I don't think it's possible. You could certainly compile and install XFree86 into a user defined directory, and the XFree86 Imake config files let you specify the target directory if you want to use one different from the default for some reason. However that would not get you a working X server, as the X server talks directly to the hardware, and must be ran as root. That is done by the X server being ran as root via SUID, or by a wrapper application that is root being SUID. Either way, you must be root in order to set up an X server to run from a nonstandard location, and if someone is trusted to have their custom X server running built out of a user account, since it is a root owned process, they might as well be root to begin with, because they essentially have root if you trust them to compile XFree86 and then allow it to be ran as a root owned process. In any case, it is highly discouraged to try to install XFree86 in a location other than the system supplies unless one is a developer who is knowledgeable about what they are doing, including all pitfalls. For one thing, if you install XFree86 compiled from source, you will no longer be able to upgrade the OS distribution to a new OS release, nor upgrade XFree86 via rpm due to differences in the way which things are installed which have conflicting symlink directions, a situation which is not easily resolved without side effects. Fortunately however, my XFree86 src.rpm will recompile and work on Red Hat Linux 8.0, 9, RHEL 3, Fedora Core 1, and rawhide with appropriate tweaking using the comments at the top of the specfile, and having the required dependancies precompiled and upgraded as need be. If it is a RHL 7.x or other release, all bets are off, good luck, caveat emptor. ;o) Hope this helps. -- Mike A. Harris _______________________________________________ XFree86 mailing list XFree86@xxxxxxxxxxx http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xfree86
