[lug] Linux Partition Sizes

[hirsch at zapmedia.com]

Bear Giles writes:
 > > This made me
 > > want to make future machines partition in such a way as to have / be
 > > mounted ro.
 > 
 > Is that possible?  I looked at that briefly in the past, but ran into
 > problems because you need to be able to write some files (e.g., /etc/mtab)
 > before mounting additional filesystems.

I've done it, but it can be a little tricky.  At boot time I created a
ram disk and made /etc/mtab be a link there.  Also, it is easier if
you use devfs becaues the ownership of several devices gets changed at
run time--this is especially true of some distributions like RedHat
that change ownership of audio devices depending on who logs in to the
console, but all linuxes will change ownership of ptys, I think.

I used to have a laptop with a read only hard drive.  I couldn't save
any files on it, but I could shut down really quickly without any
complaints at boot time.  This was before journaling file systems were
the norm.

--Michael