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Oh, oh, a great example of plasticfs!

mkdir /tmp/example 
cd /tmp/example 
PLASTICFS="chroot /tmp/example | viewpath /tmp/example /" \
LD_PRELOAD=libplasticfs.so \
bash

This is actually from the documentation file. Basically, if you want to open the file /etc/hello.txt, this is what will happen:

  • /etc/hello.txt becomes /tmp/example/etc/hello.txt
  • etc/hello.txt is searched in /tmp/example/, then in / (meaning you can read any file from /)
  • If the file is changed, the change is stored in /tmp/example/etc/hello.txt

So... you can do your typical ./configure && make install without being root since all changes will be stored in /tmp/example!

Published on November 14, 2005 at 16:52 EST

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