the /usr partition

[James Davenport]

In Volume 7, Issue 102, message 11 of 18, Scott Menter says
> Well, this has been said before, but the point is that /usr should be
> mounted read-only under 4.x.

I buy this argument for clients (in fact, I do the same already under
SUNos 3.x). BUT, on the server I mount it r/w because I typically make 1/2
(one or two) edits a week to it: adding to /usr/etc/printcap ot termcap or
updating shell scripts in /usr/local/bin or ...

I don't run 4.0 (yet:-)) - what's the argument that says /usr should be
r/o on the server?

[[ As I recently found out, you need it even to boot single user, since
most of the executables are on /usr (for example, /bin is a symlink to
/usr/bin!) as well as the shared library.  If it is mounted r/o, then a
crash that doesn't even have a chance to sync (such as a power outage or a
"L1-A" followed by "b") won't leave the partition in an inconsistent
state.  Of course, if you aren't writing to it anyway, it probably doesn't
matter.  --wnl ]]

James Davenport
jhd at uk.ac.bath.maths