install gentoo and then freeze (make it read-only)

f.kater · Guru Joined: 23 May 2002 Posts: 342 Location: Berlin

Hi,

I am looking for a way to

make my fine-tuned as-is gentoo system read-only
copy it to a USB stick,
and boot from there.
From time to time I would then (temporarily) make the system read-/writable again to update packages/change configs.
(I can not use live cd and others since my system is completely fine-tuned.)
(I'd like to temporarily make the system writable to update packages/configs.)

Background: I have some long-living servers with gentoo running which shall be booted from USB stick to remove the harddisks.

Could anyone list the topics I need to deal with to achieve that?
I believe I should not simply copy it all to stick since USB flash RAM does not like lots of file changes etc.

Thank you
Felix

xaviermiller · Posted: Wed Sep 30, 2009 1:30 pm Post subject:

Hello,

You can take a look at catalyst, which generate live CDs.

I think there are also topics about Gentoo live CDs in the Wiki.
_________________
Kind regards,
Xavier Miller

f.kater · Guru Joined: 23 May 2002 Posts: 342 Location: Berlin

Thanks a lot for catalyst. However, the info how to make an EXISTING build usable on a READ-ONLY media is not easy to get from there.

To put it in simple words:

I believe I only need to know what programs need to be changed to not write to disk.

disable swap (obviously)
redirect syslog (how?)
what else...

?

boerKrelis · Posted: Wed Sep 30, 2009 9:29 pm Post subject:

Unless you take special action /var and /tmp need to be writable. The rest can probably be mounted readonly.
So look under /var to find which programs you'll need to reconfigure for readonly operation, and you may be able to pull this off.