Subject: RE: FVWM: Changing FVWM's location

From: "Moore, Garron" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 16:09:35 -0700

What you have explained below is not an option for us. We can't assume the location that they are putting it. I can't even assume that they have root access or write permissions in /usr/local or /opt. Given this, do you have any recommendations? I would be willing to create a script that goes into any file where the path is stored and replaces it. 

I realize that what I'm asking is somewhat unique. I would really appreciate any advice that you could give that would help me accomplish what I need to.

Thanks,

Garron Moore

-----Original Message-----
From: Mikhael Goikhman [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Friday, July 16, 2004 3:40 PM
To: Moore, Garron
Cc: FVWM Users
Subject: Re: FVWM: Changing FVWM's location

On 16 Jul 2004 15:26:40 -0700, Moore, Garron wrote:
> 
> I don't just want to move the location for the sake of moving it. The 
> disk layout of end system that will be using FVWM is unknown to me. I 
> have no knowledge of their filesystem layout and directory structure. 
> I need to prepare FVWM so that wherever they want to place it on their 
> disk, it will work as long as they have the environment variable 
> $FVWM_ROOT pointed at the place they copied it to. They will not have 
> a compiler on their system to rebuild based on their location choice.

You may freely assume that /usr/local/fvwm (or /opt/fvwm) is the location allocated for FVWM on any unix system, just use it. Require to setup one symlink at this location to the actual prefix.

Regards,
Mikhael.
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---

From: Mikhael Goikhman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 23:45:05 +0000

On 16 Jul 2004 16:09:35 -0700, Moore, Garron wrote:
> 
> What you have explained below is not an option for us. We can't assume
> the location that they are putting it. I can't even assume that they
> have root access or write permissions in /usr/local or /opt. Given
> this, do you have any recommendations?

I can believe they have no compiler, but have no root access? Do you mean
different users should have separate fvwm installations on these machines?
Why the admins would not cooperate and install one global fvwm instance?

If anything else fails, you may still write to /tmp.

Create a wrapper script doing "ln -sf `dirname $0` /tmp/fvwm-root" before
launching bin/fvwm, and then "touch /tmp/fvwm-root" every hour until fvwm
runs if you fear some automatical process may clean up old files in /tmp.

> I would be willing to create a script that goes into any file where the
> path is stored and replaces it.

I would really like not to discuss this solution. Besides, I don't think
you can edit binary executables.

Another idea is just to ask the users about the prefix directory they
want to use for fvwm (or assume it is /home/joe for user joe) and then
build the binary package with this prefix for them. You may even fully
automate this process, they send an email with one subject line and get
the tarball as the result.

Regards,
Mikhael.

---

From: Micha Feigin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2004 05:06:20 +0300

> I realize that what I'm asking is somewhat unique. I would really appreciate any advice that you could give that would help me accomplish what I need to.

I haven't seen the sources, but if fvwm uses hardcoded directories then
the end users will either need to have root access to install it or have
a compiler so that they can recompile it for their system requirements,
or like someone else suggested, let them install wherever they want and
make temporary links from /tmp each time you want to run it (may be a
problem though letting multiple users run fvwm at the same time).

> You may freely assume that /usr/local/fvwm (or /opt/fvwm) is the location allocated for FVWM on any unix system, just use it. Require to setup one symlink at this location to the actual prefix.

No you can't. This would be true for red hat systems with root access
but in general would be false (debian for example doesn't even have
/opt).

>  +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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>  at the Tel-Aviv University CC.
>

---

From: Mikhael Goikhman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2004 09:17:36 +0000

On 17 Jul 2004 05:06:20 +0300, Micha Feigin wrote:
> 
> Mikhael wrote:
> > 
> > You may freely assume that /usr/local/fvwm (or /opt/fvwm) is the
> > location allocated for FVWM on any unix system, just use it. Require
> > to setup one symlink at this location to the actual prefix.
> 

I don't think you understood me correctly. Of course, standards define
both locations /usr/local and /opt to be local, they can't be used by the
core system, so a local sysadmin should mkdir them first if needed.

Regards,
Mikhael.