From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Mar 31 14:00:27 2003 Return-Path: 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 7D49D37B401 for ; Mon, 31 Mar 2003 14:00:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from rwcrmhc52.attbi.com (rwcrmhc52.attbi.com [216.148.227.88]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C145943FAF for ; Mon, 31 Mar 2003 14:00:26 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from freebsd-questions-local@be-well.no-ip.com) Received: from be-well.ilk.org (lowellg.ne.client2.attbi.com[24.147.188.198]) by rwcrmhc52.attbi.com (rwcrmhc52) with ESMTP id <2003033122002605200j6lm0e>; Mon, 31 Mar 2003 22:00:26 +0000 Received: from be-well.ilk.org (lowellg.ne.client2.attbi.com [24.147.188.198] (may be forged)) by be-well.ilk.org (8.12.9/8.12.7) with ESMTP id h2VM0OXf001458; Mon, 31 Mar 2003 17:00:24 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from freebsd-questions-local@be-well.no-ip.com) Received: (from lowell@localhost) by be-well.ilk.org (8.12.9/8.12.6/Submit) id h2VM0OUi001455; Mon, 31 Mar 2003 17:00:24 -0500 (EST) X-Authentication-Warning: be-well.ilk.org: lowell set sender to freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org using -f Sender: lowell@be-well.no-ip.com To: "J. Seth Henry" References: <20030330154319.I73024-100000@whitetower.gambrl01.md.comcast.net> From: Lowell Gilbert Date: 31 Mar 2003 17:00:24 -0500 In-Reply-To: <20030330154319.I73024-100000@whitetower.gambrl01.md.comcast.net> Message-ID: <44adfbdwnb.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> Lines: 20 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: /dev on a read-only filesystem? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 22:00:30 -0000 "J. Seth Henry" writes: > The trick is, if I make / read-only, I run into problems with /dev. During > boot, I get numerous error messages - and things don't seem to work quite > right. Is there a way to mount / read-only, while maintaining a working > /dev? Can /dev be mounted from another filesystem - or, preferably (since > the OS is already running) be linked to, say, /usr/dev? I think you still need the devices on the root filesystem, even if you later mount something else over the directory. That's because there's a chicken and egg problem -- they need to be there for the other filesystems to be mounted in the first place. So the symlink approach won't work, but mounting it on top of /dev from elsewhere would work. I believe the typical approach on diskless machines is to put it into an mfs, but you'd have to doublecheck the documentation on it. You could also use devfs, of course, but I'm not sure, offhand, how well that worked before 5.x.