can i not install rpm package without a root password?

[y2j_2062]

hey ive just downloaded an rpm package to install ethereal.
can i not install it without root privileges ??
is there some other way ??
thanx.

[Nerderello]

short answer - no.

Thing is, you'll be accessing folders which have restricted (to root) access. For example, ethereal puts its executable into the /usr/sbin folder.

On top of this, running ethereal requires the root password. After all, you could use it to spy upon someone else on that linux machine.

Is there any reason why you don't have access to the root password?


Nerderello

[synapse13]

didn't become super rich by being a butt-head. He made Windows very easy to use by automatically giving you root priviledge. When i decided to look
at Linux as a replacement to Windows mainly due to its high price and
insecurity, i wanted a distro that would be as easy as Windows to use.
Therefore no distro that does not let you LOG IN AS ROOT has a snowballs chance in hell of getting on my hard drive. From day one with linux, even though i knew virtually nothing about it, i logged in as root,thereby giving
me the Windows experience.Its been a year now and it has never caused
me a problem. I laugh everytime i need a forum post,and there are many,
many of them, where somebody can't do something because they are not
ROOT. I guess its a form of self-flagellation.

[darkrose0510]

didn't become super rich by being a butt-head. He made Windows very easy to use by automatically giving you root priviledge. When i decided to look
at Linux as a replacement to Windows mainly due to its high price and
insecurity, i wanted a distro that would be as easy as Windows to use.
Therefore no distro that does not let you LOG IN AS ROOT has a snowballs chance in hell of getting on my hard drive. From day one with linux, even though i knew virtually nothing about it, i logged in as root,thereby giving
me the Windows experience.Its been a year now and it has never caused
me a problem. I laugh everytime i need a forum post,and there are many,
many of them, where somebody can't do something because they are not
ROOT. I guess its a form of self-flagellation.

YAAT, YHBC, HAND.

[budman7]

Therefore no distro that does not let you LOG IN AS ROOT has a snowballs chance in hell of getting on my hard drive.

Count yourself lucky. Logging in as root all the time and going on the internet is just asking for trouble.
Even in Windows I do not login as Administrator.
I login as a limited user.
It is not that much extra of a PITA to work with.

[mwolfe38]

didn't become super rich by being a butt-head. He made Windows very easy to use by automatically giving you root priviledge. When i decided to look
at Linux as a replacement to Windows mainly due to its high price and
insecurity, i wanted a distro that would be as easy as Windows to use.
Therefore no distro that does not let you LOG IN AS ROOT has a snowballs chance in hell of getting on my hard drive. From day one with linux, even though i knew virtually nothing about it, i logged in as root,thereby giving
me the Windows experience.Its been a year now and it has never caused
me a problem. I laugh everytime i need a forum post,and there are many,
many of them, where somebody can't do something because they are not
ROOT. I guess its a form of self-flagellation.

I know this thread is old but I just came across and thought i'd mention that this is horribly short sighted, unintelligent advice.

Sure, you may not have any problems logging in as root. The reason is simple, not too many viruses and attacks take place on an ordinary unix/linux user's machine because the majority of them do not login as root. If everyone logged in with root privileges it might actually be worth a hacker/virus writers time to try and doop them.

Please do not encouraging others to participate in your reckless habits. It certainly is not a step in the right direction, as you can see with microsoft now using User Account Protection on vista (which I might point out is very annoying, so much so that many users simply disable it). A huge number of vulnerabilities exist because users are logged in as an administrator on most windows system and this is the primary reason anti-spyware/mallware/virus software exists.

Most intelligent people understand this and they do not log in as root. Why? Because not only are you opening up your system to countless ways of attack, you are doing it for no real reason. If you know the root password, you can simply su to the root user while logged in as a normal user. Example, open up a command prompt and type su -
And type the password for the root account.
This gives you access to the root account with the root users $PATH so you can use commands not in your regular user's path.
Desktop administration utilities will ask for you to provide the root password before you can make configuration changes so those applications aren't a problem either. Some systems use a (typically) more secure system through a sudo command. This allows a user to use privileged commands without entering the root password, instead he/she just enters the password assigned to his/her account before executing the command. Without prefixing the command with sudo, access will not be allowed. This allows more flexibility and control as far as what users can do and is the method used on most newer distributions including ubuntu.