Re: Corel/Debian Linux Installer

["Christopher W. Curtis" <ccurtis@aet-usa.com>]

Russell Coker wrote:
> 
   I (Christopher Curtis) wrote:
> >Ack.  You're right.  The same thing applies to /dev.  I guess the root
> >filesystem (for all practical purposes) _has_ to be mounted read-write.
> >Syslog opens a file in /dev and anyone wanting raw access to anything in
> >/dev would probably have trouble as well.  I don't want to create a slew
> >of partitions for the sake of doing so, but I think it would be ideal if
> >it were possible to never fsck / after a crash.  This may not be so.
> 
> Opening device files on a read-only file system works well for me.  I've just
> mounted a file system read-only, see this:
> rjc@lyta:/usr/src$touch foo
> touch: foo: Read-only file system
> rjc@lyta:/usr/src$ls -l null
> crw-rw-rw-   1 root     sys        1,   3 Aug  1  1997 null
> rjc@lyta:/usr/src$cat /etc/passwd > null
> rjc@lyta:/usr/src$

Well, there are other problems that need to be resolved.  I tried to mount
/ readonly a few days ago (ahh, how soon we forget) and there is an issue
with the debian boot scripts if not a technical one.  MAKEDEV is always
recreated (from memory, here) and that will not work, and syslog tries to
write to /dev/log, which also fails.  Character(/block) devices may work,
but pipes/sockets apparently do not.

> For /etc, the fstab file is not a problem.  mtab could be an issue, but it

mtab~ is the issue I was trying to avoid by allowing /etc be rw.  However
(and as you noted) passwd and shadow would also be problematic. 
Sufficient use of symlinks in /dev and /etc could allow a system to mount
/ ro, but it seems like far more effort than it is worth.  Imo, the most
"reasonable" solution is to keep / small and mounted rw.

$0.02,
Christopher