Re: Corel/Debian Linux Installer
"Christopher W. Curtis" <ccurtis@aet-usa.com> writes:
> 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.
I have several production shell-servers that run with / (including /etc)
mounted read-only. The key is either to copy /dev to a ramdisk and then
mount it rw over the top of the original /dev directory early on in the
boot process, or to use devfs which sidesteps the problem altogether.
The /etc/mtab issue is easily solved by making it a symlink to
/proc/mounts. The boot scripts probably go a little wrong in this case,
but the tools that manipulate mtab know about the possibility and do the
right thing.
There are a couple of bugs in the debian boot scripts that needed
ironing out (unfortunately I forget where---I usually end up tidying up
lots of crud in any case), and /etc/{adjtime,motd} needed to be
symlinked into /var. That done, everything is working fine and we've
seen no problems at all.
Chris.
--
Chris Webb <chris@arachsys.com> Tel: +44 1299 404075
Arachsys Internet Services Ltd Fax: +44 1299 402597
Web: http://www.arachsys.com/ Home: +44 1584 890524
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