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I need to deploy, manage and run software as a non-privileged user in SuSE (that is, no root access whatsoever, can't use system's package management, etc).

What are my options?

I'd prefer reusing system's package manager (YaST) by somehow setting up a separate user-local repository. Second best choice is a separate package management system that supports user-local repositories. Preferably it would also support push-style updates (as opposed to pull).

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  • Canonical question which I was looking for but haven't found until after I started a bounty on this one. - Non-Root Package Managers Commented Feb 26, 2013 at 20:26
  • I think there is not much to say about it beyond what has been said. There are various possible methodologies for installing software as a non-root user, but there aren't any formal systems, so there is not a canonical answer. Although it may seem like a "very interesting and important" question, it's probably only so to the small minority of users who have a serious need for such a thing, which, considering the potentially colossal amount of work and headache involved, helps explain why it hasn't happened. Commented Mar 3, 2013 at 15:09

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Well for Gentoo there is the Gentoo Prefix project which allows you to install packages to somewhere different than / . Gentoo's Package manager portage is written in Python and very portable so you could easily setup a new tree for a user that that user has full access to without breaking anything.

Two Problems I see:

  1. You'll probably have to compile a lot of stuff or build binary packages for your users that way and you'll probably have to install a lot of stuff twice so that the prefix thingy works properly (I think it would be hard to build stuff against you already installed packages that way)

  2. You'd not have a push-service.

The other approach I see would be to offer a punch of tar.gz files that are basically just custom made packages from your distribution patched to use a different prefix: Let's say you create a "Library" dir in every user dir and add "~/Library/usr/bin" to each user's path, a simple package manager could be whipped up to take care of installations (you could also look at Arch Linux's pacman for that since it's basically just .tar.gz files and dependencies.

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    But he's not using Gentoo, he's on SuSE. So how does this help? Commented Feb 28, 2013 at 2:47
  • Like ire_and_curses said, this is for Gentoo, not SuSE. I would downvote, but I'm only at 123 rep (it takes 125 to downvote..) Commented Mar 2, 2013 at 15:51
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    Gentoo prefix can also be installed on SUSE. Commented Mar 3, 2013 at 11:29
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    While this is not an SuSE specific answer, there is no SuSE specific answer, so someone who absolutely must have a linux system that can do this might be interested in knowing what's actually available. "Alternatives" are hardly irrelevant or tangential if they are, in fact, the only possibility. + 1 Commented Mar 3, 2013 at 15:13
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Use a privileged user manager [ licensed :( ] and you could run commands that need super user access as a normal user. Everything is tracked and audited

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    Hi! Can someone elaborate on that a bit more... ? Can a user work normally with Linux (get packages, install, compile, etc) in a restricted networking environment (i.e. without having access to play with local/remote proxy settings, etc)? Commented Dec 5, 2012 at 12:25
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You can permit all of zypper family command to your user in /etc/sudoers file.

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  • Could you be a bit more precise? How do you do that, what precautions have to be taken, any risks? Commented Mar 3, 2013 at 23:26
  • zypper command such as apt-get in debian or yum in redhat-base distro. So you can : youruser ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/zypper , then you don't need to root privilege and your password. Commented Mar 4, 2013 at 13:16
  • When you specify commands, you don't have any risk. Commented Mar 4, 2013 at 13:17
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    Sure, no risk. Not that any random user who can install/remove packages can ever screw the system up royally. Commented Mar 4, 2013 at 13:23
  • no, because system itself uses a locking system. Commented Mar 5, 2013 at 2:17

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