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I am new to shared Linux environments and have always had root privileges on my own machines, working without these privileges has been an exercise in how to go about working in a local setting. I am working with a shared rhel cluster with the need to have users install their own software locally due to our os and most of our nodes running statelessly. The current accepted method of installing software locally (besides anaconda or compiling from source) is by downloading a rpm file into a temp directory, then extracting the files without installing them with:

rpm2cpio <rpm package> | cpio -idv

It seems pretty hacky (though maybe necessary in this kind of environment) and from my understanding on rpm it could also introduce some pretty big dependency issues.

Is there a better way to install software locally without root privileges and without having to compile from source?

ghidalgo
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    No, there are no other ways. – harrymc Aug 19 '21 at 15:56
  • Good to know - thank you! I did see the original post mine was labeled as duplicate, but it seems like there is no discussion on dependencies. Isn't using rpm alone a poor solution for dependency/package management? – ghidalgo Aug 19 '21 at 16:05
  • Dependencies need repositories to install. – harrymc Aug 19 '21 at 16:09
  • So using rpm packages alone would then be unable to deal with any dependencies, correct? – ghidalgo Aug 19 '21 at 16:29
  • Yes, unless you construct your own local repository, but that would be rather complicated (*if* it can work without root). – harrymc Aug 19 '21 at 17:02
  • Thanks, I really appreciate it! Seems like containers are probably a better solution to this kind of problem - next step! – ghidalgo Aug 19 '21 at 17:08

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