sfakeroot

manipulate files faking root privileges
git clone git://git.vx21.xyz/sfakeroot
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README (2489B)

      1 sfakeroot
      2 =========
      3 
      4 sfakeroot is a minimalist fakeroot[1]. It uses LD_PRELOAD
      5 to provide an environment in which stat() and related calls
      6 return uid/gid 0, so that files appear to be owned by root even when they're
      7 not. Inside the fakeroot environment permissions can be modified as if the
      8 current user is root, though ownership of the underlying files is never
      9 really changed. Any permissions set within the fakeroot environment will
     10 last only for the duration of the session, once sfakeroot exits all changes
     11 are lost. If you need to preserve session state between calls you can tell sfakeroot to save the session to a file, which can be loaded again when sfakeroot runs. See man page for details.
     12 
     13 Why?
     14 ----
     15 
     16 sfakeroot was written because there is no OpenBSD compatible fakeroot
     17 equivalent, I considered porting fakeroot but it seemed too difficult.
     18 On Linux you will probably just use docker, but this could be a useful
     19 tool if docker is not an option.
     20 
     21 Currently supported calls
     22 --------------------------
     23 
     24 This is a list of calls that will currently be intercepted by sfakeroot:
     25 
     26 * stat
     27 * lstat
     28 * fstat
     29 * fstatat
     30 * chown
     31 * lchown
     32 * fchown
     33 * fchownat
     34 * chmod
     35 * statx
     36 
     37 Installation
     38 ------------
     39 
     40 To build run:
     41 
     42     $ make
     43 
     44 followed by (as root),
     45 
     46     # make install
     47 
     48 to install to standard locations.
     49 
     50 You can also uninstall with (as root),
     51 
     52     # make uninstall
     53 
     54 Contributing
     55 ------------
     56 
     57 Please feel welcome to submit patches and bug reports via email
     58 to my public-inbox ~richardipsum/public-inbox@lists.sr.ht
     59 alternatively patches may be submitted in private using the address
     60 found in the git log.
     61 
     62 See https://git-send-email.io/ for details on contributing
     63 via email with git.
     64 
     65 The archive of my public-inbox can be found at
     66 https://lists.sr.ht/~richardipsum/public-inbox.
     67 
     68 Known issues
     69 ------------
     70 
     71 Since OpenBSD's base utils are statically linked sfakeroot may be less
     72 useful on OpenBSD than it is on Linux, since the LD_PRELOAD tricks only
     73 work with dynamically linked executables. Even with dynamically linked
     74 executables sfakeroot may be of limited use for any programs using pledge(),
     75 since sfakeroot may try to make use of syscalls not specified in the pledge()
     76 call thereby causing sfakeroot to be terminated with SIGABRT.
     77 
     78 To make better use of sfakeroot on OpenBSD you may wish to use it with sbase[2].
     79 
     80 [1]: http://freshmeat.sourceforge.net/projects/fakeroot
     81 [2]: https://git.suckless.org/sbase/
     82 
     83 TODO
     84 ----
     85 
     86 * Support fts and ftw functions.
     87 * Support fchmod fchmodat