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GNU Guix launchesGNU Guix launchesPosted Nov 27, 2012 14:54 UTC (Tue) by lambda (subscriber, #40735)In reply to: GNU Guix launches by davidescott Parent article: GNU Guix launches
You can't think of situations in which you don't want to give a user root, but want them to be able to install software? How about a corporate server, shared by several users. You don't want one user to be able to read and write another's files without permission, so you can't give them root, but to get their job done, they need to install various packages, and the sysadmins don't have the bandwidth to respond immediately to each and every request for an updated version of package X. Or how about shared hosting? People install their own software all the time in shared hosting environments; but it's generally tarballs of PHP that they expand into their home directory, and without package management, it's always out of date and insecure. If I want to do my web programming in a language like Go, I need to compile it and its dependencies, carefully configuring them to install into my home directory, and again, I don't get package management so upgrades are a pain. Just because you think that there might be good reasons not to allow a user to install their own software (though I'm pretty skeptical of those) doesn't mean there aren't situations in which you want a user to be able to install their own software, but don't want to give them root.
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GNU Guix launches Posted Nov 27, 2012 18:55 UTC (Tue) by davidescott (guest, #58580) [Link]
I don't think we were saying it was NEVER a useful feature, just that it was not a particularly useful feature, and certainly not for the workplace environments mentioned in the initial comment.
Shared hosting yes because the provider in shared hosting isn't really an admin. The provider can never say "NO" and has no responsibility to ensure that individual applications work. Their only real responsibility is make sure the lights are on.
Corporate environments no, because the server admins are required to approve deployment which is directly connected to their responsibility to keep servers updated and verify that security updates don't break any deployed applications.
For something that advertises itself as a "free software distribution of the GNU system" user installed packages seems a less useful feature.
GNU Guix launches Posted Nov 28, 2012 13:58 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
Well, workplace environments are perhaps the most obvious example, or at least the first one I could think of, where for certain classes of user it would be very useful to be able to install packages as a non-root user. But shared hosting is another good example: my Web host will let me compile stuff, but if I wanted to install a system package in my area, it would be incredibly difficult (if not technically impossible). That this arrangement could potentially lead to me running outdated or insecure software is surely something that the hosting provider would rather avoid. Interestingly, SourceForge has started to discontinue various centrally-maintained hosted applications in favour of people installing their own versions in their own hosting areas: a concrete example of this counterintuitive trend in action.
Of course, I could choose to use a virtual private host instead, or something that provides some lighter form of virtualisation - perhaps OpenVZ or Linux-VServer - but I have to admit that I wouldn't know whether the latter solutions would necessarily give me access to package installation tools or whether I'd still need to bother the central administators.
GNU Guix launches Posted Nov 28, 2012 21:41 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
running in a container (OpenVZ or Linux-VServer) should give you all the package management capabilities you would have running your own system, with the one exception that you would not be able to change the kernel.
Running a full VM will give you that capability as well.
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