[Sheflug] user rights and directories

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <nospam [at] sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>]

>>>>> "James" == James Bruce <aca00jab [at] sheffield.ac.uk> writes:

    James> so can someone *please* help?

First things first:

    James> surely as a user i want to be able to install things,

Not to system directories, sorry, nope, *nix is a _multi-user_
system.  All of the Unix administration utilities are based on the
model that the system administrator (which may very well be the only
user of the system, just wearing a different hat) does that.

    James> and usr/local/ cant be sensitive stuff or anything...

Everything that one user can install for another is potentially
sensitive.  Remember, the people who design those installer utilities
have to think about systems where most users are different people, and
have earned more or less trust.

Yes, I know that you're the only user on your system.  Same thing is
true of me on most of the systems I administer, but I've learned to be
pretty happy with the discipline imposed by the Unix way of doing
things.  (Yes, I have executed the equivalent of rm -rf / from a
non-root account, among many other smaller benefits.)

And there will come a day when you want to give limited access to your
system to somebody else.

    James> how can i install things from my user account?! without
    James> using 'su' as it seems to never find the program i want to
    James> install after ive switched,,,

Have you RTFMed?  Most applications allow you to change the
installation location using something like prefix=/usr/local (that
gives the default, of course).  If you want wolf to have them
installed, use something like prefix=/home/wolf/apps.  Then add
/home/wolf/apps/bin to wolf's $PATH.

    James> then i type in the same command... install.py, whilst in
    James> the same directory... and it gives me an error like cant be
    James> found or somehting....

Try `echo $PATH'.  I doubt you have the current directory in root's
path.  And you shouldn't, so don't add it.

`./install.py' as root should win.

    James> then i try "sh install.py" and gives a load more errors.

It's a python script.  If you want to explicitly execute a python
script, use `python install.py'.


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