A script for installing deb packages without root privileges.
I use this to install useful/up-to-date software on university lab machines without having to compile everything from scratch.
- Run
./user-install-deb - Wait for the automatic bootstrap (only on the first run)
- You will be dropped into a shell in which you can modify any file on the root filesystem
- To install packages, first run fakeroot, then you can use
apt install <package> - To use your installed packages, you need to be running inside the shell
unionfs is used to create a filesystem which is a union of the real root filesystem, and a writable folder which we own.
We can read files from the real root filesystem, but when we modify them they are saved to the writable folder.
fakechroot is used to treat this union filesystem as the root filesystem.
This also allows us to pass-through certain files/folders, which is used for folders which should be excluded from the unionfs ($HOME, /tmp, /dev, ...)
fakeroot is included to appear as the root user for running programs that check the user-id (e.g. dpkg when installing packages).