On Mon, Jan 04, 2010 at 08:34:51PM +0100, Frank Batschulat (Home) wrote: > I was just curious, years ago the apparent direction for R/O root was > to essentially minimize roots volatile content so I was curious > how we do now with putting more and more volatile content into root these > days. > > indeed as you mention it'll work the way you describe, however for long > running > systems with an assumed R/O root, the desire to have volatile content out of > root and thus variable without having the need to remount root R/W and again > R/O after the change also has some attraction. > > afterall, not all changes to volatile content in /etc (or in this case, SMF > manifests) > happen during upgrade/install of add. packages but also due to random > daily system administration. if we assume a R/O root, that'd require a > remount R/W, remount R/O > cycle of root.
SMF service manifests are *not* volatile content: they are read-only content. That alone is sufficient to convince me that this case has zero impact on future projects to make it possible to run with a read-only /. The overall content of / will be "volatile" if you: a) can't reboot, and b) must allow for installs of additional packages from time to time. But upgrades require and will continue to require reboots, and one should only rarely have to install additional packages. So I don't see how delivering non-volatile content to / makes it harder to make / read-only. To be safe I think we should ask the validated execution project team. Nico --
