Hooks for read-only /usr
 

I like to have a read-only /usr filesystem. So I have ...

# cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50readonly-usr
DPkg
{
// Auto re-mounting of a readonly /usr
Pre-Invoke {"mount -o remount,rw /usr";};
Post-Invoke {"mount -o remount,ro /usr || true";};
}


Unfortunately this works quite badly. During execution of apt,
services are stopped and started again, so it is frequently the case
that by the time apt runs the Post-invoke hook, processes are holding
open files in /usr. This prevents /usr being re-mounted (that's the
reason for the "|| true"). Is there a better way to do this?

One idea that occurred to me was to have dpkg do this; it could
remount /usr read-write before removing the old files and unpacking
the new, and mount it read-only after perhaps the package
configuration stage (before restarting things).

Anyway, is something like this already possible?

Thanks,
James.


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Hooks for read-only /usr
 

On 06/19/2008 03:12 AM, James Youngman wrote:

I like to have a read-only /usr filesystem. So I have ...

# cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50readonly-usr
DPkg
{
// Auto re-mounting of a readonly /usr
Pre-Invoke {"mount -o remount,rw /usr";};
Post-Invoke {"mount -o remount,ro /usr || true";};
}


Unfortunately this works quite badly. During execution of apt,
services are stopped and started again, so it is frequently the case
that by the time apt runs the Post-invoke hook, processes are holding
open files in /usr. This prevents /usr being re-mounted (that's the
reason for the "|| true"). Is there a better way to do this?

One idea that occurred to me was to have dpkg do this; it could
remount /usr read-write before removing the old files and unpacking
the new, and mount it read-only after perhaps the package
configuration stage (before restarting things).

Anyway, is something like this already possible?

Thanks,
James.




It may be possible. You could use "at" to schedule the remounting of
/usr at a later time, e.g. 10 minutes:


Post-Invoke {
"echo 'mount -o remount,ro /usr' | at now + 10 minutes
}

You'll have to hope that whatever processes using /usr have finished by
the time the mount command executes, and there will be a window during
which time /usr will be writable. It's kludgy, but I don't think you'll
find a non-kludgy solution for this.


Anyway, good luck.


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