Read Only Linux Appliance

From Zanecorpwiki

Making a Linux appliance is easy. Just prototype whatever you're doing, then move it to the production platform. With lots of appliances, like firewalls, small controllers, SAN hub, etc., it can be useful to install everything on a read only flash drive. This is useful for a number of reasons including security and power. With flash, read only is also important because flash memory has limited write cycles.

The following steps assume openSUSE 11.1, though I've done similar with 10.1, and in general I think would work (or close to it) for anything in series 10 or above. It will probably break in some future version, but I would expect it to hold for a few generations yet.

Note, these instructions are not for creating a DVD or CD based system. The approach is similar, but here I use a flash base drive that can be written to, but is generally left in a read only mode. This is easier, and also allows you to easily change the configuration and upgrade the machine without burning a whole new DVD.