[Pythonmac-SIG] Re: 2.1.1 under 10.1 [was Python package maker for OS X Installer.app]

[Stuart Bishop]

On Monday, November 12, 2001, at 09:54  PM, Jack Jansen wrote:
> Why are so many people using "sudo make install"? This is a really bad 
> idea, I
> think, to install Python owned by root, but a lot of people seem to do 
> this.
> Is there something in the documentation somewhere that suggests this? 
> Another
> reason?
>

The idea is to have all the binaries owned by the root user, so a 
standard account
cannot modify them. This way they cannot be corrupted accidently, 
converted to
trojans or infected by a virus without knowing the superuser password.

A better approach is to install the software as a seperate user (eg. 
'bin' was
a common one under many Unix systems), as this protects like above and 
has the
added advantage of protecting against malicious or just badly written 
install
programs. However, running the installer as the 'bin' user will often 
fail
as installers frequently require root privileges. For example, installing
Python into the standard location will fail, as on a correctly setup 
system
it will be unable to create the directory /usr/local/lib/python2.1.

--
Stuart Bishop <zen@shangri-la.dropbear.id.au>
http://shangri-la.dropbear.id.au/