On Wed, Sep 15, 1999 at 11:46:36AM +1000, Brian May wrote:
> [description removed]
I have made most of the changed required for my redesign of diskless.
Amazingly, it looks like no changed are required for dpkg. I haven't
yet tested anything though, and implementing secure mode might be a bit
awkward. Currently I am considering the following:
1 installation moves /var, /dev, and /tmp into /rw/
2 symlinks are created: /var --> /rw/var,
/dev --> /rw/dev, and
/tmp --> /rw/tmp.
On startup (non-secure mode) /var, /dev, and /tmp are mounted
as usual, over the top of the directories under /rw/
(should I do the same thing for /etc too? I inclined not to
- I think it should be read-only. Making /etc read-write
might make adding extra hosts easier, as all host
specific data can be copied and processed on startup)
On startup (secure mode) the temp directory is mounted in a temp
location (eg /copy), and files all files are copied from /rw to /copy.
This means the read-write files are all contained on the one partition,
that could easierly be erased/formatted on startup. At this stage, /copy
is re-mounted over /rw. This would be easier if I didn't have to re-mount
/copy twice, I will need to think about that.
The result will be that /var, /dev, and /tmp are read-write,
but completely refreshed every-time the computer boots.
Anyway, as part of this redesign, I propose to package a new package,
diskless-image.
I am not sure if I normally have to ITP a new package when it is based
on the same source package, but this one is a bit unusual...
...it is not meant to be manually installed! Rather, when you create a
new diskless-image with diskless-newimage, this script automatically
installs diskless-image.deb with the dpkg --root parameter, so that it
only effects the NFS-root image. I think it is important to have
this in the Debian archive though, to make upgrades easier.
I believe that creating a separate package makes diskless for modular
and easier to maintain. I suspect that it will make installing different
architectures easier, as diskless-image can be installed a host other then
the server, but I can't test this.
As it is possible that diskless-image could break your computer if
installed on the root directory by mistake, I have a check in the preinst
file to ensure the directory /etc/diskless-image exists. If it doesn't
installation will abort.
Any comments?
--
Brian May <bam@snoopy.apana.org.au>
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