[OT][sdiy] bootable linux cd

[Michael Zacherl]

(inserted [OT] since this drifted away...)

ASSI wrote:
> No, *NIX systems run perfectly well just in RAM and boot happily from 
> non-writable medium. 

Sure, and most (all?) of them use a ramdisk in order to emulate such 
media. And I agree, reading a CDROM is no big exercise.
Of course the information is lost when the unit's powered off (said that 
just to don't leave it out).
I'd be happy about any pointers regarding this issue just in case my 
statement doesn't reflect current progress.

> This is by design as you really don't want to have 
> the files writable on any security critical system. 

The only advantage of this is that in case of intrusion or a similar
threat you can pull the powerplug and restart the box and be virtually 
absolutely sure that it has the same state as it had before the incident.
It certainly does not help if the software on this box has some flaw(s)
which allows to intrude and take control using some exploit(s) for the
bug(s).

> There are many more 
> embedded and embedded real-time OS out there that have even smaller 
> footprints, but you need to pay money to use them.

There are diffrences and I'm sorry not having been differentiated 
enough. I was referring to a - let's say "modern complement of OS" like 
an Atari at it's days, had based on todays standard components, running 
a GUI and such. I had no embedded systems in focus which mostly use a 
heavily modified kernel which on its side has its limitations.
Admittedly, since out of focus, I'm not very up-to-date regarding 
embedded devices, so again I'd be happy about pointers to information.

   ;-) Michael.