Re: Initializing a new chroot with yum

On Mon, 2009-02-23 at 22:05 +0100, Felix Schwarz wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I try to install some packages completely separated from my normal rpmdb/yum 
> setup (just install them in a separate root directory). Ideally this should be 
> possible without being root.
> 
> So I initialized a new rpmdb using 'rpm --initdb --root /home/fs/bar'. Then I 
> put a yum.conf in the bar directory, pointing to a separate yum.repos.d (using 
> the 'reposdir' directive).
> 
> I hoped that
>    'yum --installroot=/home/fs/bar -c yum.conf install <pkg>'
> would actually install a package locally but yum only says:
> 'Error: Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml) for repository: 
> foobar. Please verify its path and try again'.
> 
> When I add a new repository config to fedora, yum will automatically download 
> repomd.xml from the server. So what am I doing wrong?
> 

You won't really be able to do an install of software to another path as
non-root. There are a lot of things that will require root - like
ownerships on files, for example.

You should look at the 'mock' program
https://fedorahosted.org/mock/

it uses yum to make chroots.

-sv