xenial (1) fakeroot-pseudo.1.gz

NAME

       fakeroot - run a command in an environment faking root privileges for file manipulation

SYNOPSIS

       fakeroot [-i|-s local-state-dir] [-h|--help ] [-v|--version ] [--] [command]

DESCRIPTION

       fakeroot  runs  a  command  in  an  environment  wherein  it  appears  to  have  root privileges for file
       manipulation.  This is useful for allowing users to create file  system  images,  archives  and  packages
       (tar,  ar, .deb etc.) with files in them with root permissions/ownership. Without fakeroot one would need
       to have root privileges to create the constituent files of the archives with the correct permissions  and
       ownership, and then pack them up, or one would have to construct the archives directly, without using the
       archiver.  This version of fakeroot uses pseudo(1) to replace the  file  manipulation  library  functions
       (chmod(2),  stat(2) etc.) by ones that simulate the effect the real library functions would have had, had
       the user really been root.

OPTIONS

       -l arg, --lib arg
              Does nothing, accepted for compatibility only.

       --faked arg
              Does nothing, accepted for compatibility only.

       [--] command
              Any command you want to be ran as fakeroot. Use ‘--’ if in the command you have other options that
              may confuse fakeroot's option parsing.

       -s local-state-dir
              Keep  the  pseudo  state directory on exit. This directory holds the pseudo database files and log
              files. See the pseudo documentation on the details on how this directory can be reused.

       -i local-state-dir
              Load a pseudo environment previously saved using -s from the specified directory.  Note that  this
              does not implicitly save the direcotry, use -s instead for that behaviour. Using the same file for
              both -i and -s in a single fakeroot invocation is safe.

       -u,    --unknown-is-real Does nothing, accepted for compatibility only.

       -b fd  Does nothing, accepted for compatibility only.

       -h     Display help.

       -v     Display version.

EXAMPLES

       Here is an example session with fakeroot.  Notice that inside the fake root environment file manipulation
       that requires root privileges succeeds, but is not really happening.

       $  whoami
       joost
       $ fakeroot /bin/bash
       #  whoami
       root
       # mknod hda3 b 3 1
       # ls -ld hda3
       brw-r--r--   1 root     root       3,   1 Jul  2 22:58 hda3
       # chown joost:root hda3
       # ls -ld hda3
       brw-r--r--   1 joost    root       3,   1 Jul  2 22:58 hda3
       # ls -ld /
       drwxr-xr-x  20 root     root         1024 Jun 17 21:50 /
       # chown joost:users /
       # chmod a+w /
       # ls -ld /
       drwxrwxrwx  20 joost    users        1024 Jun 17 21:50 /
       # exit
       $ ls -ld /
       drwxr-xr-x  20 root     root         1024 Jun 17 21:50 //
       $ ls -ld hda3
       -rw-r--r--   1 joost    users           0 Jul  2 22:58 hda3

       Only the effects that user joost could do anyway happen for real.

       fakeroot  was  specifically  written  to  enable users to create Debian GNU/Linux packages (in the deb(5)
       format) without giving them root privileges.   This  can  be  done  by  commands  like  dpkg-buildpackage
       -rfakeroot  or debuild -rfakeroot (actually, -rfakeroot is default in debuild nowadays, so you don't need
       that argument).

SECURITY ASPECTS

       fakeroot is a regular, non-setuid program. It does not enhance  a  user's  privileges,  or  decrease  the
       system's security.

BUGS

       See pseudo(1) for the details on the bugs of the underlying fakeroot implementation.

COPYING

       fakeroot  wrapper  for  pseudo  is distributed under the GNU General Public License version 3.0 or later.
       pseudo itself is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 or later.

AUTHORS

       The original fakeroot manual page has mostly been written  by  J.H.M.  Dassen  <jdassen@debian.org>  with
       rather a lot modifications and additions by joost and Clint.  It was later modified by Andrew Shadura for
       this fakeroot wrapper for pseudo.

SEE ALSO

       pseudo(1) fakeroot(1) dpkg-buildpackage(1), debuild(1)