Package: dpkg To create a binary *.deb package, root privileges are required. This is because you must create a complete directory structure with proper ownerships and permissions first, and then use dpkg-deb to create a package from it.
But this should't really be necessary. A tar file is a tar file, and you can set any permissions inside it if you can write to it. The only thing that is necessary is a program to set permissions inside tar files. Another idea: unpack everything with mode 000 root.root (just because I am paranoid and to easily see failed installation, such permissions are rather unusual), and set all permissions correctly in postinst. This has the advantage that if permissions ever get messed up, they can be restored quickly without reinstalling the entire package. There is a package we could use for that, called fixperms (it is on sunsite). It can set and verify permissions using a text file where permissions are stored. It is GPLed, and the documentation even says that it is part of Debian - but I can't find it anywhere in the current distribution. Marek
