How-To Make the root filesystem read-only

Jul 9th, 2008 | linux | No Comments

Introduction

There are several reasons why you might want to make your root file system read only. I wanted to have a system on a flash disk, and since flash disks are damaged after repeated read-write circles the read-only root is a very nice solution. Other reasons why you would want to make your root partition read only include:

  • If you want maximum security for your server, and want it to boot from a read only medium (i.e. a CD-ROM)
  • If you want to make your own live-cd
  • To avoid that power loss or system crash damage the root partition.
  • If you want to mount the same nfsroot on several thin clients

The following procedure is what i did to turn my SuSE 10.1 root file system to read-only. It should work on both earlier and later versions but i haven't tested it yet. There could be better/more elegant solutions, if you think that something is missing please fill free to edit this howto.

Acknowledgments

Some of the information on this howto where found here.

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Anatomy of the Linux kernel

Jun 27th, 2008 | linux | No Comments

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-linux-kernel/

History and architectural decomposition

M. Tim Jones (mtj@mtjones.com), Consultant Engineer, Emulex Corp.

The Linux® kernel is the core of a large and complex operating system, and while it's huge, it is well organized in terms of subsystems and layers. In this article, you explore the general structure of the Linux kernel and get to know its major subsystems and core interfaces. Where possible, you get links to other IBM articles to help you dig deeper.

Given that the goal of this article is to introduce you to the Linux kernel and explore its architecture and major components, let's start with a short tour of Linux kernel history, then look at the Linux kernel architecture from 30,000 feet, and, finally, examine its major subsystems. The Linux kernel is over six million lines of code, so this introduction is not exhaustive. Use the pointers to more content to dig in further.

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