Locked Archive or Installer to force end users to accept a license agreement
 

Currently I'm trying to create a cd image which is now just source and binaries in tar.gz archives along with some documentation. I have been asked to find a way to make the user accept our license agreement before extracting the files.

I'm a relative newb with linux so I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions to how this could be accomplished. There is always an installshield or installshiled like solution, what tools would you recommend? Or some kind of secured archive format that displays a EULA that must be accepted before the archive is open. Are there any archive formats that support this. The two options I was able to find were build an rpm (I believe I can add a script to pop up the license agreement), or using cat to combine a header shell script with a tar file. (i've got a url that explains but I can't post until I've got 5 posts). Then adding stuff to the script to bring up EULA and get acceptance from the user.

The rpm way limits the which distriibutions to be supported. The second way is pretty easy to circumvent by editing the shell script though I'm not sure we need to be overly concerned about that. I'm more concerned with people inadvertantly bypassing the EULA.

I'm sure there are much better linux ways of doing things. Any suggestions appreciated. I'd prefer something simple as I'm a newb and don't have too much time to implement stuff.

Thanks

I'd look into the mechanism SUN uses to distribute their JVM and JDK for linux. I believe it's similar to the shell script you mentioned.