Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!rice!sun-spots-request
From: bob@kahala.hig.hawaii.edu (Bob Cunningham)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: Re: read only /usr
Message-ID: <8901241814.AA09487@kahala.hig.hawaii.edu>
Date: 3 Feb 89 15:24:51 GMT
Sender: usenet@rice.edu
Organization: Sun-Spots
Lines: 26
Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu
Original-Date: Tue, 24 Jan 89 08:14:54 HST
X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 7, Issue 138, message 6 of 10

You noted,
>... Now it is currently
>our custom to use rdist to keep all our /usr's on our various fileservers
>identical, but if /usr is mounted readonly I would guess that will no
>longer work....

In SunOS4.0+ it becomes attractive to locate non-Sun software elsewhere
other than the /usr partition (all our /usr/local/mumble directories are
now typically logical links to other partitions and/or automounted),
especially since when you first install SunOS4.0 the install program will
try to create a VERY full /usr partition (in ocasional cases, too small
even to upgrade to SunOS4.0.1 without going back and rebuilding the /usr
partition size first...I highly recommend adding at least few extra Mbytes
onto the /usr partition when installing SunOS4.0; if you'll actually be
adding some other software there be generous, very generous).

So, one approach would be to install the blurfl and other packages in
another (rw mounted) partition, leaving behind just a logical link
somewhere in the (ro mounted) /usr partition.

Another approach would be to mount /usr rw only on your servers (the only
systems on which you're likely going to be doing changes).

Another is, just before running rdist, run a script that uses the new
remount option of the mount command to change the /usr partition's status
from ro to rw (haven't tried this myself, but looks feasible).