How can I install a package without root access?

Question

I have no root access on this machine.

I would like to know if there is a way I can download Ubuntu packages and install them as non-root?

Probably in my ~/bin or ~/usr/share or something like that? Would that work?

Answer 1

Apt doesn't support it directly, but there are ways to do it.

One is to use schroot to create a non-root chroot. This is a somewhat involved process, but one you should be able find community help for as many developers set up chroot environments for compiling code.

The second way I know of is to call dpkg directly from the command line. The following example will install package.deb into your home directory.

dpkg -i --force-not-root --root=$HOME package.deb

The disadvantage to using dpkg like this is that error messages are likely to be cryptic; dpkg doesn't automatically resolve dependencies or create the directory structure it expects.

Finally, you could use the apt-get source command to fetch the source of the package and configure it to install locally. Usually this looks something like:

apt-get source package
cd package
./configure --prefix=$HOME
make
make install

The disadvantage to this approach is that you need the development environment available for this approach to work at all, and you might find yourself compiling dozens of packages in order to resolve all the dependencies.

Answer 2

I assume you want to install jedit. First you have to find the package and download it. I just take the deb file from some mirror and open a console/terminal:

1. mkdir /tmp/jedit && cd /tmp/jedit -- Makes a new diretory in tmp and changes into it.
2. wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/universe/j/jedit/jedit_4.3.1.dfsg-0ubuntu1_all.deb -- Download package
3. ar x jedit_4.3.1.dfsg-0ubuntu1_all.deb or, easy to type, ar x *.deb -- this extracts the file contents
4. tar xvzf data.tar.gz -- the file data.tar.gz has all the stuff which you need for executing the software
5. usr/bin/jedit opens the editor
6. done :-)

You can move the files to some point in your home directory and execute them from there.