Read-only File Systems

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Making an entire file system read-only can be very beneficial to a system. It can reduce the need for the management of individual files which are on the read-only file system. On UNIX systems, files which can be read-only are usually grouped into directories which can be put on read-only file systems.

Read-only Media

Many types of storage media can be physically configured to be read-only with jumpers on hard drives , or write-protect tabs on tapes, or WORMs and CD-R. These read-only media can be very useful, since they provide an extra layer of security for static files, such as executables. Read-only media makes it impossible to alter these static images.

Read-only Mount

Mounting a file system as a read-only file system prevents writing to the files in the file system. However, this protection method can be circumvented if there is access to the device file which contains the file system, or a privileged user can unmount and remount the file system without the read-only option.

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