From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jun 8 22:03:06 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6EA3416A41A for ; Thu, 8 Jun 2006 22:03:06 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dkelly@Grumpy.DynDNS.org) Received: from smtp.knology.net (smtp.knology.net [24.214.63.101]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1F8D743D5E for ; Thu, 8 Jun 2006 22:03:05 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from dkelly@Grumpy.DynDNS.org) Received: (qmail 6568 invoked by uid 0); 8 Jun 2006 20:13:01 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO Grumpy.DynDNS.org) (216.186.148.249) by smtp2.knology.net with SMTP; 8 Jun 2006 20:13:01 -0000 Received: by Grumpy.DynDNS.org (Postfix, from userid 928) id 50FAC28421; Thu, 8 Jun 2006 15:13:42 -0500 (CDT) Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 15:13:42 -0500 From: David Kelly To: Matthias Apitz Message-ID: <20060608201342.GA57894@Grumpy.DynDNS.org> References: <20060608152916.GA12122@rebelion.Sisis.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20060608152916.GA12122@rebelion.Sisis.de> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.1i Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, drseuk@droog.sdf-eu.org Subject: Re: Configuring FreeBSD for use as an interactive kiosk X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2006 22:03:06 -0000 On Thu, Jun 08, 2006 at 05:29:16PM +0200, guru@Sisis.de wrote: > > > > I'm involved with a museum which has a standalone interactive kiosk. The > > system runs an Apache2 server with PHP and MySQL on Windows XP. The > > problem is that Windows XP keeps becoming corrupted as a result of the > > machine being switched on and off at random (by staff, kids etc.). > > > > Currently, the museum management is very open to switching to FreeBSD or > > similar - provided I can *completely* bulletproof the box against > > arbitrary power-cycling (I can't always be there to manually run fsck > > etc.). > > I tested a self-mastered Knopix-CD, ie enhanced the Knopix-CD with > our look&feel and application clients, and so you had a read-only > and for ever booting system. > > Don't know (and I'm to lazy to Google) if there is a FreeBSD live-CD > project, sure it has to be... Shouldn't be all that hard. Try simply changing your filesystems from "rw" to "ro" in /etc/fstab. I expect some logging functions may bellyache, but everything will still run. There is a Live CD in the standard CD set for each FreeBSD release that you could look at for reference. I've built "controllers" with FreeBSD on Soekris small boards with CF cards for "disk drive" and filesystems mounted ro. Used Apache, perl, mysql, php, and heck I don't remember what else. Our primary concern was write wear on the CF media. Think it was FreeBSD 4.6 or 4.7 that we used. Stripped it down to 10 MB. Compiled everything linked against shared libraries and put / and /usr in the same (my only) fs. We did add another fs for rw use. When needed it was mounted from script, written or read, then umounted on completion so that it was rarely vulnerable, but more importantly when umounted it wasn't being written to. We also used the noatime option. -- David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@HiWAAY.net ======================================================================== Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.