[arch-general] Why is it dangerous to run makepkg as root?

[William Giokas]

On Sat, May 17, 2014 at 03:49:49PM +0300, Dimitris Zervas wrote:
> 
> 
> >The second idea is that this advice should prevent the script from 
> >*accidentally* damage my system. But this could be prevented by using fakeroot 
> >(which is disabled when calling makepkg with --asroot according  to the
> >
> >manpage) or chroot. And actually the proper advice in this case should be to 
> >execute makepkg using a user dedicated for this, as for most arch users it 
> >would be worse if their personal file get deleted as if the system becomes 
> >unbootable.
> I agree.
> A good idea is to automatically change to a much more restricted user, used just for building (no shells, logins, etc.).
> Chroot is too much of a hassle with, most of times, no point. You'll have to deal with dependent libs etc. etc. etc.
> A good option here could be to hardlink/copy the files of the dependencies inside the chroot temporary in order to do the job.
> But still, I think it's too much. You should check the scripts on your own...

There is already a package maintained by the Arch devs called
'devtools'¹ specifically for building packages in a chroot, among other
things.

¹: https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/devtools/

Thanks,
-- 
William Giokas | KaiSforza | http://kaictl.net/
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