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On Wed, Jul 04, 2012 at 07:46:47PM +0200, Tobias Klausmann wrote: |
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> Hi! |
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> |
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> Recently, I have again bumped into the question whether one |
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> should compile the kernel as root. One of the things that puzzles |
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> me is why almost every HowTo, blog post and book recommends |
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> building as non-root -- yet basically no distribution /helps/ the |
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> user with doing that. |
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|
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Most distros don't have to do anything, they are not requiring users to |
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build their own kernels :) |
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|
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So in reality, they all do help their users with this, it's trivial to |
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build a kernel as a user on those distros. Actually, it is also on |
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Gentoo, there's no need to ever put a kernel anywhere except in your |
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home directory when building it. |
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|
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Oh, and one more reason you "never want to build your kernel as root", a |
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few years ago, the kernel build process had a bug where it accidentally |
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tried to do a 'rm -rf /*' on your filesystem. None of the kernel |
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developers ever noticed that as they didn't build a kernel as root, and |
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the bug stuck around for a relativly long time (weeks at least.) There |
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was also some semi-serious talk about leaving it in the build as well, |
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just to "catch" people who were doing this, but sanity prevailed and it |
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was fixed. But, you never know if that old bug might slip back in one |
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day :) |
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good luck, |
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greg k-h |
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