3 ms·

You can. There's nothing stopping you adding ~/bin to $PATH. Many compilers allow you to specify the destination location either via a ./configure flag (for exa

You can. There's nothing stopping you adding ~/bin to $PATH. Many compilers allow you to specify the destination location either via a ./configure flag (for example) or an environmental variable. Or there is always the option of doing a `make build` and then manually copying the binaries into your ~/bin directory without doing a `make install` You can also add ~/lib (for example) to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH path if you wanted to install custom libraries and even have your own man page path too. All of this is already possibly on Linux and Unix however I'm not sure it's something you actively want to encourage as allowing users to install whatever they want on servers lowers the security to the level of the worst user on that server. If it was really deemed necessary that users should be able to install whatever they want then I'd sooner roll out a dedicated VM per user so at least their damage is self-contained (barring any visible networked infrastructure)

coldtea 9y ago
>You can. There's nothing stopping you adding ~/bin to $PATH. Many compilers allow you to specify the destination location either via a ./configure flag (for example) or an environmental variable. Of course you can, technically. The parent laments why it's not easier to achieve. Already you're talking about manually building for example. Where's a package manager that will allow for that too, not just the central repo? (not just asking if such manager exists in some form, asking where it is in modern popular distros). >All of this is already possibly on Linux and Unix however I'm not sure it's something you actively want to encourage as allowing users to install whatever they want on servers lowers the security to the level of the worst user on that server. Which also touches the parent's question. Why is it not easier AND safer? It's not like we don't have security models that allow for such things...
- hnlmorg 9y ago
  The GP had exampled one easier and safer way of doing this: sandbox each user in their own Linux instance. Anything short of that would be sacrificing security for the sake of convenience.
foo101 9y ago
This is precisely what I am forced to do and I do this very often when I have to setup my environment in a remote box I don't have root-login too. But this is by no means a trivial process compared to how easily we load a complex app into a browser tab just by clicking a URL. I think it is fair to hope that after 25 years of Internet, it should be easy to bring in new tools from the Internet into our local environment without requiring root access in a safe and trivial manner.
- laumars 9y ago
  Firstly the internet is a lot older than 25 years (perhaps you mean web?) and secondly if the last 25 years has taught us anything it's that allowing users to download and install whatever they want usually leads to problems. I mean I do get your point and even sympathise with it, to a point. But if someone needs SSH access and I don't trust them enough to put them in the sudoers file, then I'm not going to trust them enough to even choose what software to install and run from their own local user area. I've been burnt before from intelligent people doing stupid things because they thought they knew what they were doing. So if you're not a sysadmin and you're logging into a shared host, then you don't get install rights. I don't think that's an unreasonable stance to take.

coldtea 9y ago

>You can. There's nothing stopping you adding ~/bin to $PATH. Many compilers allow you to specify the destination location either via a ./configure flag (for example) or an environmental variable. Of course you can, technically. The parent laments why it's not easier to achieve. Already you're talking about manually building for example. Where's a package manager that will allow for that too, not just the central repo? (not just asking if such manager exists in some form, asking where it is in modern popular distros). >All of this is already possibly on Linux and Unix however I'm not sure it's something you actively want to encourage as allowing users to install whatever they want on servers lowers the security to the level of the worst user on that server. Which also touches the parent's question. Why is it not easier AND safer? It's not like we don't have security models that allow for such things...

hnlmorg 9y ago
The GP had exampled one easier and safer way of doing this: sandbox each user in their own Linux instance. Anything short of that would be sacrificing security for the sake of convenience.

foo101 9y ago

This is precisely what I am forced to do and I do this very often when I have to setup my environment in a remote box I don't have root-login too. But this is by no means a trivial process compared to how easily we load a complex app into a browser tab just by clicking a URL. I think it is fair to hope that after 25 years of Internet, it should be easy to bring in new tools from the Internet into our local environment without requiring root access in a safe and trivial manner.

laumars 9y ago
Firstly the internet is a lot older than 25 years (perhaps you mean web?) and secondly if the last 25 years has taught us anything it's that allowing users to download and install whatever they want usually leads to problems. I mean I do get your point and even sympathise with it, to a point. But if someone needs SSH access and I don't trust them enough to put them in the sudoers file, then I'm not going to trust them enough to even choose what software to install and run from their own local user area. I've been burnt before from intelligent people doing stupid things because they thought they knew what they were doing. So if you're not a sysadmin and you're logging into a shared host, then you don't get install rights. I don't think that's an unreasonable stance to take.