chmod a file requires root?

G00fy · 05-01-2007, 06:48 AM

Hi,

I am working on a Mac - as I understand it's basically a BSD beneath it - and although I know a little about Linux, I know nothing about BSD.

What I am trying to accomplish is to compile libcurl from source. So I download, I ./configure it and I make it. Then when I enter "make install" it says like "Permission denied" on the file "install-sh". Which is quite logical as the rights are 0644...

So what I tried to do is:
chmod 755 install-sh <- requires root
chmod u+x install-sh <- requires root
chmod +x install-sh <- requires root

The user owning the file is 'steven' (the user I am working under), the group is '5584' (whatever that is), but I know I untarred the libcurl sources into that folder, so I guess that's something like the 'users' group under Linux.

What I want to know is how I can change the rights of this file so I can "make install" without being root.

(btw, the prefix is in my own directory, so no need to be root to install it to the system).

Thanks for any help you could give me.

Indiestory · 05-01-2007, 09:07 AM

make install always needs roto privalages under unix, You should really have a look at fink. Its basically an implementation of apt on OSX.

G00fy · 05-01-2007, 11:21 AM

Well, I use "port" (macports), so I guess that's about the same.

And the "make install" does NOT need always root privileges... It only needs that if you want to install into the system. And that's exactly not what I want to do (as pointed out before).

As for this problem... I don't know why, but the GROUP was 'steven', the user was 755 (dunno, maybe I did a chown instead of a chmod command before?)

Thanks again!

Indiestory · 05-04-2007, 06:25 PM

did you unpack the tarball(or just download) as root? This can have problems, but i can't see why it would. This is quite out of my league in this sense, the only thing i can think of is either starting again from scratch, or find a binary of lib curl

bsdunix · 05-04-2007, 10:03 PM

Quote:

The user owning the file is 'steven' (the user I am working under), the group is '5584' ... I don't know why, but the GROUP was 'steven', the user was 755.

The numbers are the GID (Group ID) and UID (User ID) respectively. The reason they are numbers when you did a file list is because the numbers don't correspond to an actual UID or GID. The UID's are typically listed in /etc/passwd and the GID's are in /etc/group.

You can fix the UID and GID of the directory by:

Code:

$ chown -R steven:stevengroup /path/to/curl-source-directory

$ chown -R steven:stevengroup $HOME/curl-7.16.2

Replace stevengroup for whatever is your group.

Quote:

So I download, I ./configure it and I make it. Then when I enter "make install" it says like "Permission denied" on the file "install-sh". Which is quite logical as the rights are 0644...

I presume you downloaded curl-7.16.2.tar.gz file? I downloaded that file, untared it, and was able to install it in my $HOME directory without problem. The install-sh already had the executable bit set so I didn't have to do a chmod.

Code:

$ cd $HOME
$ tar xzf curl-7.16.2.tar.gz
$ cd curl-7.16.2
$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/curl
$ make
$ make install

Quote:

Then when I enter "make install" it says like "Permission denied" on the file "install-sh".

Once you have the correct UID and GID set on the curl directory list, hopefully you won't get the permission denied error.