Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 19:19:16 +0000 From: Matthew Seaman <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk> To: Pierre-Luc Drouin <pldrouin@pldrouin.net> Cc: RW <rwmaillists@googlemail.com>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Memory disk "a la mfsroot"? Message-ID: <4B745834.1010309@infracaninophile.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <4B743A16.9020201@pldrouin.net> References: <4B7419F5.7050602@pldrouin.net> <4B741E56.8010002@infracaninophile.co.uk> <20100211153925.7b88844d@gumby.homeunix.com> <4B74283B.1070903@infracaninophile.co.uk> <4B743A16.9020201@pldrouin.net>
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On 11/02/2010 17:10, Pierre-Luc Drouin wrote:
>> Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of mounting a .iso as a
>> cd9660 filesystem. Which won't muck up the underlying .iso, but only
>> because it's read-only. You could mount a FFS image read-only in
>> exactly the same way -- I think there's a 'last mounted on' field in the
>> backing file image that will be updated if the it is writable (even if
>> the fs itself is mounted ro) but that's not the right answer either.
>>
>> Basically, you're going to have to mount and initialise as two separate
>> operations as far as I can see.
>>
> By this do you mean that I would need to copy the whole content of the
> read-only filesystem to the memory disk?
Yes.
> I looked at the man page for mount_unionfs and there is a big warning
> saying that it is a bad idea to use it, so I guess I will pass on this
> solution...
Ah -- that warning is probably a bit more alarming than it really
needs to be nowadays. unionfs can be used pretty effectively for many
purposes. Try it and see what happens is the best policy.
> What I am trying to do basically is to mount a filesystem from a CD but
> I want to use a memory disk to allow write operations. I would basically
> want the filesystem to behave like a regular read-write filesystem, but
> not have to copy everything into a memory disk. What does "mfs_root" do
> exactly in the official FreeBSD boot CDs? Does it copy the content of
> mfsroot.gz into a memory disk? That filesystem is so small that I guess
> it can be copied without any problem...
mfs_root does exactly that: it creates a memory based filesystem and
then expands a tarball of the system into it.
One approach you might consider is mounting your CD image read-only as
per usual, but creating memory-based /tmp and /var partitions[*]. Most
of the usual root and /usr filesystems don't need to be read-write at
all. There are only a few special locations that do and those will need
special handling. You will need to initialise your memory-backed /var
partiton by expanding a skeleton structure into it, but that's going to
be pretty small really. You will also need to make provision for editing
various files under /etc -- you might be able to create a /var/etc and
replace the real files in /etc with symlinks to copies in /var/etc.
Possibly. Or you could just have /var/etc nullfs mounted on top of /etc.
I've read reports from people setting up such things -- a while back
now, but as far as I recall they were on the whole successful.
Cheers,
Matthew
[*] There are already scripts to do this sort of thing within the base
system, although primarily aimed at diskless systems.
- --
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 7 Priory Courtyard
Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Ramsgate
Kent, CT11 9PW
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