read-only filesystems
Kevin D. Clark
kclark at CetaceanNetworks.com
Wed Mar 19 13:38:33 EST 2003
John Abreau <jabr at abreau.net> writes:
> kclark at CetaceanNetworks.com (Kevin D. Clark) writes:
>
> > But then I get to /dev. How to handle /dev? Some of the stuff under
> > /dev needs to be writable.
>
> Have you actually tried running it and it failed, or are you just assuming
> that /dev must be on a writeable filesystem?
Yes, I've tried it, and yes, it fails, for a number of reasons.
For example, it seems like the mingetty processes are dying, probably
because they can't chown the ttys that they are attempting to handle.
> The thing is, files under /dev are not regular files, they're actually
> just a mapping of kernel device drivers onto filesystem semantics. So the
> read-only state of the filesystem shouldn't be relevant to their
> function, since writing to a device file doesn't actually write to
> the filesystem it resides in.
>
> It does mean that you won't be able to, for example, chown the audio
> device
> when a user logs in on the console. However, if you chmod the audio
> device so it's world-writeable before you make the filesystem read-only,
> then it should work fine.
I guess I was hoping to solve this problem all at once instead of
perhaps having to come back to it later on, i.e. to not have to deal
with making the next /dev/whatever file world writeable when the
situation comes up.
Hmm. I suppose that I could try making the /dev/tty* file world
writeable. I'll try that soon and let you know how it works.
Thanks,
--kevin
--
Kevin D. Clark / Cetacean Networks / Portsmouth, N.H. (USA)
cetaceannetworks.com!kclark (GnuPG ID: B280F24E)
alumni.unh.edu!kdc
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