From owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Sep 4 17:55:19 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7816216A4D0 for ; Sat, 4 Sep 2004 17:55:19 +0000 (GMT) Received: from ns1.tiadon.com (SMTP.tiadon.com [69.27.132.161]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0323943D1D for ; Sat, 4 Sep 2004 17:55:19 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from kdk@daleco.biz) Received: from [69.27.131.0] ([69.27.131.0]) by ns1.tiadon.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.0); Sat, 4 Sep 2004 12:52:06 -0500 Message-ID: <413A0183.6010807@daleco.biz> Date: Sat, 04 Sep 2004 12:55:15 -0500 From: "Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P." User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040712 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Doug Chartier References: <6.1.2.0.2.20040904121109.02d8c398@mail.hal-pc.org> In-Reply-To: <6.1.2.0.2.20040904121109.02d8c398@mail.hal-pc.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-OriginalArrivalTime: 04 Sep 2004 17:52:06.0826 (UTC) FILETIME=[E4C0F0A0:01C492A7] cc: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Subject: Re: OS and Hardware X-BeenThere: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Gathering place for new users List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 04 Sep 2004 17:55:19 -0000 {Good practice: wrap your lines around 72 characters ... not everyone is running X or 256 column terminals ...} Doug Chartier wrote: > There is a Linux version on CD that runs from CD using the CD as > the OS drive instead of "C:" or other hard drive. This seems like the > answer to a multitude of questions and well as presenting a few of > its own. > IIRC, there is now a thing called "FreeBSIE" which is similar; a CD live filesystem OS on a bootable CD that's basically a "FreeBSD Demo." Never tried it myself. > This basically stops outside access to the OS from hackers, viruses, > spyware etc. Would it make sense to develop a FBSD OS - or any OS > for that matter - on something like a flash card that cannot be altered > from within the system directly? The CD approach does the same thing, > but would slow the system down if the CD had to be accessed often. If > the OS was copied from the CD to RAM, that would solve the speed > problem and maintain the base OS security. > > This might be an old concept, but it's new to me. I think FBSD has had "Picobsd" for years, which operates very similar to what you describe. Make a CD or even floppy, set it r/o, boot your firewall boxen from it ... $man picobsd Kevin Kinsey