Making the root filesystem read-only

You need to make your target device able to survive unexpected events including file corruption, and still be able to boot and achieve at least a minimum level of function. Making the root filesystem read-only is a key part of achieving this ambition because it eliminates accidental over-writes. Making it read-only is easy: replace rw with ro on the kernel command line or use an inherently read-only filesystem such as squashfs. However, you will find that there are a few files and directories that are traditionally writable:

  • /etc/resolv.conf: This file is written by network configuration scripts to record the addresses of DNS name servers. The information is volatile, so you simply have to make it a symlink ...

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