From owner-freebsd-hackers  Wed Jan 21 17:11:08 1998
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Message-ID: <19980122113708.07925@lemis.com>
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 11:37:08 +1030
From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
To: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>
Cc: Tom Bartol <bartol@salk.edu>, Snob Art Genre <benedict@echonyc.com>,
        Amancio Hasty <hasty@rah.star-gate.com>,
        Andrzej Bialecki <abial@nask.pl>, Jonathan Mini <j_mini@efn.org>,
        freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: ANNOUNCE: One-floppy FreBSD + rich networking
References: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980121164621.14765B-100000@dale.salk.edu> <199801220050.LAA00403@word.smith.net.au>
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In-Reply-To: <199801220050.LAA00403@word.smith.net.au>; from Mike Smith on Thu, Jan 22, 1998 at 11:20:24AM +1030
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On Thu, Jan 22, 1998 at 11:20:24AM +1030, Mike Smith wrote:
>>> Not to mention the rather attractive security and reliability implications
>>> of running off of a read-only medium.
>>
>> Can FreeBSD run from read-only media?  Aren't there some files in /etc
>> that need to be writable at run-time?
>
> I think it's pretty close.  You need a writable /var & /tmp, but apart
> from /etc/motd there doesn't appear to be anything else.

You can even get away without a writeable /var if you're prepared to
put up with some minor annoyances.  I run my test machine with a
read-only /usr to speed up reboots after panics.

Of course, there's no reason why you shouldn't use mfs for those odds
and ends which need to be writeable.

Greg