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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!inuxc!iuvax!pur-ee!ea.ecn.purdue.edu!davy
From: davy@ea.ecn.purdue.edu (Dave Curry)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.arch
Subject: Re: Jerry Pournelle on UNIX (From BYTE)
Message-ID: <1450@ea.ecn.purdue.edu>
Date: 9 Jan 88 15:01:46 GMT
References: <1495@osiris.UUCP> <2126@haddock.ISC.COM> <1497@osiris.UUCP> <1972@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM>
Reply-To: davy@ea.ecn.purdue.edu.UUCP (Dave Curry)
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network
Lines: 18

In article <1972@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> greg@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Greg Noel) writes:
>Yes, a write-protected root is a trivial one-line change to the kernel.  But
>that's not what we were considering; it still needs to have the functionality
>of a normal root -- that is, all the things in /etc could still be "updated,"
>for example; but how this could be done is not clear.  The Air Force kernel
>moved all modifiable files off the root file system, but it was a maintenance
>nightmare to keep track of all the programs that knew about the modifiable
>files and fix them every time there was a new release.
>-- 
>-- Greg Noel, NCR Rancho Bernardo   Greg.Noel@SanDiego.NCR.COM  or  greg@ncr-sd


BSD symbolic links could handle this, for the most part.  Symlink all the
modifiable files like /etc/passwd, etc. out to /usr/etc or something.
Then you only have to mung a few files which try to do something different
if the file is a symbolic link.

--Dave