On Wed, Feb 20, 2002 at 11:36:11AM +0000, Jonathan Perkin wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> As a recent zoularis user, I've come across an issue for people who don't
> have root on their local machines who want to use pkgsrc.  Basically, you
> can't without a lot of *.mk hacking (unless I'm mistaken).
> 
> Is this something someone is working on, if not would other people want
> it enough for me to work on it?  If I set $LOCALBASE to somewhere I have
> full write access to, pkg_* and source builds should just run, rather
> than trying to su (which my admin is a bit annoyed with :) or just failing
> with "Warning: not superuser, can't run mtree." or similar.
> 
> The thought of having all my local packages handled with familiar pkg_*
> tools is nice, and better than the encap solution I'm currently using.
> 
> Many thanks,
> 
> -- 
>  Jonathan Perkin - BBC Internet Services - <sketch@rd.bbc.co.uk>

The only problem is the mtree command that is run to make sure that the
correct directories exist before you try to install things into them,
and which reuqires that it be run as root.

You might also experience some unusual problems if, for example, you
try to install sudo as a non-root (or any other package which contains
setuid or setgid binaries, for that matter).

Regards,
Alistair