On Fri, 1 Nov 2002, Chuck Yerkes wrote:

> Quoting Dave Feustel (dfeustelmindspring.com):
> > On Friday 01 November 2002 02:22 pm, Chuck Yerkes wrote:
> > > Quoting Tim Donahue (TDonahuehaynesconstruction.com):
> ...
> > > Now, *why* do you want /etc/ on a separate partition?
> >
> > see http://seifried.org/oag/advanced-filesystem/
> Shows how to, but not WHY or what you hope to achieve.
>
> > How much would be broken if fstab were placed (or copied)
> > elsewhere so that the kernel could mount /etc during boot?
> Ick. Wrong answer. Config information like fstab lives in /etc/.
>
>
> How about if a basic /etc/ were part of / and you mounted something
> over it? (not sure of state of union mounts this decade, but they
> used to not work. Too bad.). You'd want at least rc, fstab, a

i have an OpenBSD 3.2 (Oct 3 snapshot) boot cd that union mounts
everything in / to an mfs mount (except for / /dev and /mnt, which houses
the mfs). in that application the union mount works ok, though sometimes
rewriting a file in the lower layer doesnt work as i expected.

i tried union mounting /dev to the mfs but that hangs the system, union
mounting / produces an error (both fs's in same namespace), and union
mounting over the same mountpoint crashes into ddb.

> passwd and group, perhaps others. Try it on a spare disk and always
> be able to boot from another to work it out.

as Kurt Seifried relates in the aforementioned doc, vmware is a great
place to test kooky things like this. you can even tie some of vmware's
devices to files, so for my cd i didnt even have to burn one until i got
it working in vmware.

> If you wanted, you could have the basics in /etc/, then do a vnconfig
> of a file and mount that blob over it.

all workable ideas, but the first part you mentioned - why - really is
key. once we know 'why' a user wants to do this then we can figure out
the best 'how'.

-f
http://www.blackant.net/

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