System Information – Get dmidecode Info Without Root

1. Compile and install into ~/bin (and edit your .bashrc to set the PATH to include it). libraries can similarly be compiled and installed into ~/lib (set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to point to it), and development headers can be installed into e.g. ~/includes.

2. Depending on the specific details of the programs you want to install and the libraries they depend upon, you can download the .deb files and use 'dpkg-deb -x' to extract them underneath your home directory. You will then have a lot of "fun" setting the PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and other variables. The more complex the program or app you're installing the more fun you'll be up for :)

   You will, of course, not be able to install setuid binaries this way - they'll install but (since you don't have permission to chown them to root or set the setuid bit on them) they'll just be normal binaries owned by you.

   Similarly, daemons and system services that expect to be running as a certain UID or have the ability to change uid, or expect files to be in /etc rather ~/etc and so on aren't likely to work well, if at all.

3. Most sysadmins would consider mc and mcedit to be "mostly harmless", innocuous programs.

   Very few, however, would consider installing a torrent client to be harmless, especially if they have to pay for bandwidth or end up being legally liable. Most sysadmins would probably not be entirely happy for end-users to be installing such software without permission. They may say "sure, go ahead, knock yourself out" or they may not...but you should ask about anything that may cause problems for the owners/administrators of the machine.

Not having root privileges prevents you from listening on ports below 1024 on typical Linux systems.

Thus, Squid should work OK as non-root listening on 8080 as long as the system you are on hasn't blocked incoming traffic on that port via a firewall or iptables.

Not sure how many file descriptors Squid uses typically but if your admin has set a limit for that, that could be an issue, as well as other things. If you are using Squid's filtering feature (such as the adzapper script, for example) - be aware Squid spawns a process for each incoming HTTP request and if your account has a process limit you may hit it. (It might do the Apache pre-fork thing as well, it's been awhile since I played with squid.)

To port-forward in the manner you are describing, you need some type of forwarder, tunneler or proxy running on the first machine forwarding to the second machine. So you would "SSH tunnel" into the unrestricted machine, and you need a program running on the unrestricted machine that accepts traffic on a port and then "reforwards" it to another host. Your tunnel then has 2 hops. Possibly rinetd could do this for you easily.