>> I've seen three responses already to my note about read-only roots.

(Incidentally, a handful more since then.)

>> I was somewhat surprised to find that, of the many changes I've
>> made, very few are actually related to the read-only root.  Briefly,
>> /etc/fstab needs to be somewhere else, with all that implies.

> I think quite a few files from /etc would need to be
> elsewhere...unless you never add users, reconfigure sendmail, etc.

Or more precisely, unless you want any such changes to be shared among
all the machines using that root area...which is why that never
occurred to me: I would want such changes to be shared.

Adding users is a problem only if you keep your user database entirely
in files.  Our disklesses use YP (er, NIS).

Reconfiguring sendmail is a problem only if you keep the cf file in
/etc.  I use Berkeley sendmail and keep the cf file in
/local/std/lib/sendmail/cf.

> What about a nullfs mount of /var/etc over /etc ?

A nullfs union mount, presumably?  That would help a good deal; indeed,
that would fix essentially all the problems - once you get /var
mounted.  I'm still thinking (and talking with one or two people
privately) about various ways to deal with that problem.  Thanks for
mentioning that.  I think it shouldn't be necessary, but it's an
excellent way to detect things that write to /etc - run like that for a
while, shut down, and see what's appeared in /var/etc.

					der Mouse

			    mouse@collatz.mcrcim.mcgill.edu