Responding to a question posted earlier this month, Centos 5.1 includes
configuration files for enabling the read-only root filesystem.
Actually, all filesystems can be mounted read-only with particular files
and directories mounted on a read-write tmpfs (in RAM). This capability
comes directly from the upstream provider.
You can have your Centos system running read-only root in two
easy steps:
1. Edit /etc/sysconfig/readonly-root and change READONLY=no to
READONLY=yes
2. Reboot
When your computer comes back up, the root and any other system
partitions will be mounted read-only. All the files and directories
listed in /etc/rwtab will be mounted read-write on a tmpfs filesystem.
You can add additional files and directories to rwtab to make them
writable after reboot.
Note that this system is stateless. When you reboot again, everything
written to the tmpfs filesystem vanishes and the system will be exactly
as it was the last time it was booted. You could add a writable
filesystem on disk or NFS for writing files you want to retain after
rebooting.
Take a look at /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit to see how the magic is done.
This capability is a "technology preview" (beta) and is buggy. Note that
/etc/mtab and thus "mount" do not show the complete list of filesystems
because the /etc directory is on a read-only filesystem. /proc/mounts
always shows the correct mount information. You could update /etc/mtab
from /proc/mounts to correct it both after boot and after running the
mount or umount commands to change mounts.
Run "fgrep -v rootfs /proc/mounts >/etc/mtab" to correct /etc/mtab.
Note that mounting or symlinking /proc/mounts to /etc/mtab causes other
problems such as breaking the df command.
You can change your read-only root filesystem to read-write mode
immediately with this command run by the root user:
mount -n -o remount,rw /
- Fred