[mythtv-users] Issue compiling 0.24-fixes

[Brian Wood]

On Monday, November 08, 2010 07:12:07 am Chris Thauberger wrote:

> in case anyone runs into this in the future, it turned out to be a simple
> fix.
> 
> Apparently, with 0.24, running the make command with 'sudo' is not
> enough...I was running (as I always have in the past) 'sudo make -j3' Just
> for verification, I tried going in as full root (sudo su -) and then
> running make, and lo and behold...it worked.
> 
> Anyway, it is now up and running, and going good.
> 
> Chris
> 
> 
> 
> Why would you run "make" as root?  You should only run "make install" (or
> preferably "checkinstall") as root.
> 
> -- Kevin
> 
> 'sudo make' has always worked before, and if I just 'make' I have always
> been blasted with insufficient rights errors...Always been like that in
> the last 3.5 years I've been compiling Myth with MythBuntu... This was the
> first time I had issues doing it that way (as shown in my first
> question...), and switching to root worked...

There's more to root than just privileges. "su" will escalate your rights, but will do nothing about your environment.

"su -" will elevate your rights, but will also change your environment to root's. The environment will include things like 
your path, your home directory, TERM environment value, locale and other factors.

So it makes sense that you get the results you describe. You may be able to prevent needing to escalate to root by 
tweaking your own user's environment. A common example is root usually includes /sbin in the path, while normal users 
often do not.

Run "env" as the user in question to see what the environment actually is.

I've never liked the "sudo" approach, though it works well for some folks. I use it to grant temporary rights to some 
users, but not for the main system admin's work. If you just need to run a command or two, sudo is OK, but if you need to 
do a lot of admin work as root "su -" works better for me (yes I know you can set things up to "remember" your sudo-
escalated rights).

But anything that possibly can should be done as a normal user.