Installing rpm packages on a deb-system without root access

This blog is a bit of topic, and more or less a note for myself. I just wanted to install OpenOffice3 on my work-machine. Since I have no root-access for that linux-machine, and the administrators are usually busy, I did the following:

• Download the deb-package from openoffice.org (there are internally rpm-files)
  
• Create a private rpm database: mkdir -p /disk1/heiko/rpmdb; rpm --dbpath /disk1/heiko/rpmdb --initdb
• Install the rpm packages without dependancies: rpm --nodeps --dbpath /disk1/heiko/rpmdb --prefix /disk1/heiko/local/OO3.1 --install ooobasis3.1-*.rpm openoffice.org*.rpm

Now I can use openoffice 3.1 by starting /disk1/heiko/local/OO3.1/openoffice.org3/program/soffice