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From: zben@umd5.umd.edu (Ben Cranston)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system,comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: System 8 (What enhancements do people want?)
Summary: Switchlaunch to a Ram disk system
Message-ID: <6461@umd5.umd.edu>
Date: 2 May 90 16:56:15 GMT
References: <1990Apr26.212419.14978@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu: <5590@okstate.UUCP: <43478@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu: <1990May2.003335.3250@agate.berkeley.edu:
Reply-To: zben@umd5.umd.edu (Ben Cranston)
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Lines: 26

In article <5590@okstate.UUCP: minich@a.cs.okstate.edu (Robert Minich) writes:
: o Security  for public labs, so we don't have to have a bunch of
:   hacked inits to stay sane. Maybe network booting, as well.

Recently sl198004@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Vincent Schonau) wrote:
: This is definitely a _must_ keeps people from screwing with your system
: disks....

In <1990May2.003335.3250@agate.berkeley.edu: lippin@math.berkeley.edu writes:
: While network booting would be real nice, it's not going to keep
: people from screwing with tghe system disks.  What is needed is a way
: to boot from a read-only file system (currently the system folder must
: be writable.)  Then a local hard disk could have a read-only system
: partition, which is safe against all users except those both cunning
: and malicious.

One possibility is to erect a local RAM disk and switchlaunch to a system
on that RAM disk.  I don't think you need to write to the system folder
until after the boot, I believe in the scheme we are using the switchlaunch
is a startup application.

-- 

"It's all about Power, it's all about Control
 All the rest is lies for the credulous"
-- Man-in-the-street interview in Romania one week after Ceaucescu execution.