per-user RPM database
I had a question about using OpenOffice on a UA account, and knowing that it wasn’t likely to get installed system-wide, I thought about what other options were available. OpenOffice is distributed as an RPM package, so I decided to look into whether it would be possible to install an RPM package in a home directory.
The UA servers use RedHat, so they have RPM installed already. By default RPM edits the system-wide RPM database when RPM is used to install anything. Most of us do not have access to edit this database, so you need to make a copy of the RPM database in your own home directory. I found some pretty good instructions for this:
Creating a Private RPM Database
http://www.nordugrid.org/documents/rpm_for_everybody.html#4
I used this method to initialize an RPM database directory in my homedir, and then copy the system dir to my homedir, so that all of the packages installed on the system would be available to fulfill dependencies for any packages that this database is used to install.
After doing this, I was able to install the OpenOffice RPM packages, making sure to use these arguments:
- –dbpath DIRECTORY
Use the database in DIRECTORY rather than the default path /var/lib/rpm - –prefix NEWPATH
For relocatable binary packages, translate all file paths that start with the installation prefix in the package relocation hint(s) to NEWPATH.