WARNING: this is currently (and unfortunately) unmaintained

I left the code available here to hopefully inspire other people.

(fake) su

Heroku buildpack that creates a chroot jail, and allows users to run commands as (fake)root inside it.

Usage

$ ls
Gemfile      Gemfile.lock web.rb

$ heroku create -s cedar -b http://github.com/fabiokung/heroku-buildpack-fakesu.git

$ git push heroku master
wait...

$ heroku run bash

(dyno)$ id
uid=28171(u28171) gid=28171

(dyno)$ fakesu

(dyno)# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root)

(dyno)# whoami
root

(dyno)# ls ~
Gemfile  Gemfile.lock  bin  web.rb

Default process type (console)

$ heroku run console

(dyno)# whoami
root

-c option for custom commands as (fake)root

$ heroku run bash

(dyno)$ fakesu -c id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root)

(dyno)$ fakesu -c touch /etc/file-created-as-root

(dyno)$ fakesu -c ls -l /etc/file-created-as-root
-rw------- 1 root root 0 Jan 30 09:50 /etc/file-created-as-root

Why would I need such a crazy thing?

Because I want to build and run my own system packages

e.g.: a different version of ruby:

$ heroku run console

(dyno)# cd /tmp

(dyno)# curl -O http://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/1.9/ruby-1.9.2-pXXX.tar.gz

(dyno)# tar zxvf ruby-1.9.2-pXXX.tar.gz

(dyno)# cd ruby-1.9.2-pXXX

(dyno)# ./configure --prefix=/usr/local optflags="-O3" debugflags="-g3 -ggdb"

(dyno)# make

(dyno)# make install

Because I have system dependencies (e.g. libzmq-dev)

$ heroku run console

(dyno)# cat Gemfile
source :rubygems
gem "zmq"
...

(dyno)# echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chris-lea/libpgm/ubuntu lucid main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list

(dyno)# echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chris-lea/zeromq/ubuntu lucid main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list

(dyno)# apt-get update

(dyno)# apt-get install libzmq-dbg libzmq-dev libzmq1

(dyno)# bundle install
Fetching source index for http://rubygems.org/
...
Installing zmq (2.1.4) with native extensions 
Using bundler (1.0.21) 

In this case, your application processes (Procfile) would need to be started inside the chroot jail, where the system dependencies were installed.

fakesu -c can be used for that, e.g.: fakesu -c bundle exec thin -p $PORT ...

Because I want to install and run services

$ heroku run console

(dyno)# apt-get install nginx

(dyno)# env | grep PORT
PORT=59222

(dyno)# vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
edit the "listen 80" line and change it to the port given by the previous command

(dyno)# /etc/init.d/nginx restart

Using another terminal, it is now possible to create routes:

$ heroku ps
Process  State      Command  
-------  ---------  -------  
run.1    up for 1m  bash    

$ heroku routes:create
Creating route... done
tcp://route.heroku.com:28392

$ heroku routes:attach tcp://route.heroku.com:28392 run.1

$ open http://route.heroku.com:28392

Because it can be combined with other buildpacks

TODO, using the heroku-multi-buildpack

Because I want to be the (fake)root of my dyno :)