I never submitted a bugreport for that, as I thought it was too paranoid for debian, but while the new version of apt uses a similar method, I want to share the one I used since wheezy to drop privileges:
adduser --system --home /var/lib/apt --no-create-home --group apt dpkg-statoverride --update --add apt apt 755 \ /var/cache/apt/archives/partial dpkg-statoverride --update --add apt apt 755 /var/lib/apt/lists/partial install -m 700 -d /root/.aptitude cp -a /usr/lib/apt/methods ~/.aptitude chown apt:apt /root/.aptitude/methods/{ftp,http,mirror,rsh} chmod 6755 /root/.aptitude/methods/{ftp,http,mirror,rsh} now you can launch apt-get or aptitude setting the Dir::Bin::Methods configuration option to /root/.aptitude/methods, for example: apt-get -o Dir::Bin::Methods=/root/.aptitude/methods install aptitude or creating the file /root/.aptitude/config with this content: Dir "/"; Dir::Bin ""; Dir::Bin::Methods "/root/.aptitude/methods"; thanks to the modular design of apt-get, this solution is applicable for the wheezy/jessie users, as you don't even need to modify the source, but you must take care to upgrade the files on /root/.aptitude/methods/* every time the apt package is updated ciao! -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org