Installing some packages on Ubuntu using apt-get install without root privileges

Question

At work, we have a Ubuntu server to which people connect from intranet for using certain tools installed there. If certain user wants to install a particular software on Ubuntu but does not have root privileges, is it possible to do so using Ubuntu package manager: apt-get install? If yes, how?

I know other way would be get the source of the software build it yourself, and install the binary in home area of the user, but would like to avoid that route.

The reason we would like to allow this is:
1) That tool is very specific to that project and would not want to install system wide.
2) There is no other intention of subverting or hacking.

Answer 1

If you mean, install a private copy using apt-get, then no.

You can with some trickery convince dpkg to do it directly, but it's not reliable.

The sensible method is to get the source and compile a local version.

However, I don't see the value in 10 people downloading package X and installing it locally, using 10 times the storage space of just having it installed correctly?

Some discussion of this here - https://askubuntu.com/questions/339/how-can-i-install-a-package-without-root-access

Answer 2

Any package to be installed (using apt-get) should be installed using a privileged user with sudo.

You can build the package in your home directory, or get a standalone binary package that does not need to be built and can run directly after unpacking.

Answer 3

You can give the user specific sudo privileges for just using apt-get.

You can access the sudoers file by running the command visudo. You will want to follow the syntax.

USER HOSTNAME=COMMAND

http://www.gratisoft.us/sudo/sudoers.man.html