Is it possible to mount a loopback file as read-only, and redirect all writes to RAM?
4 Answers
It is possible using a union filesystem layer like aufs.
Demo:
Create a filesystem image
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/image bs=1024 count=1024
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1048576 bytes (1.0 MB) copied, 0.0028428 s, 369 MB/s
# mke2fs /tmp/image
...
Mount it, populate it
# mkdir /tmp/imgmnt
# mount -o loop /tmp/image /tmp/imgmnt
# echo hello > /tmp/imgmnt/hello.txt
# umount /tmp/imgmnt
Mount it read-only
# mount -o loop,ro /tmp/image /tmp/imgmnt
# echo blah > /tmp/imgmnt/hello.txt
-su: /tmp/imgmnt/hello.txt: Read-only file system
A small RAM filesystem
# mkdir /tmp/rammnt
# mount -t tmpfs -o size=1M none /tmp/rammnt
Combine both
# mkdir /tmp/combined
# mount -t aufs -o br:/tmp/rammnt:/tmp/imgmnt=ro none /tmp/combined
That mount option to create a new "branch" (br
) by stacking /tmp/rammnt
(read-write) on top of /tmp/imgmnt
(read-only). This "branch" is made visible as a (read-write) filesystem on /tmp/combined
.
(See the aufs(5) man page for all the details.)
Now all that's done, here's what you have:
# ls /tmp/combined
hello.txt lost+found
# cat /tmp/combined/hello.txt
hello
# echo bye > /tmp/combined/hello.txt
# cat /tmp/combined/hello.txt
bye
# cat imgmnt/hello.txt
hello
# cat rammnt/hello.txt
bye
So the writes "stop" in the tmpfs
filesystem, they do not attempt to propagate back to the loop-mounted image file.
You could have used a plain directory (on a read/write filesystem), or possibly a directory under /dev/shm
if that works for you, instead of creating a specific tmpfs
for that.
This technique (or variations thereof) is used by some distribution LiveCD. The Wikipedia aufs entry lists a few.
-
+1 thanks! A question: (1) is it possible to do this with
fstab
, such that the mount point is/
? (i.e. so the system boots from a discardable image, pretty much.) Dec 22, 2011 at 23:29 -
I don't think so. If you want to do that for
/
, I believe you're better off with an initrd (that's how it is done for livecds I believe). You might be able to do it from an init script though that sounds tricky.– MatDec 23, 2011 at 7:11 -
fallocate
may be better thandd
if your filesystem supports it (ext4 does).– gmathtNov 20, 2021 at 11:55
Update:
It seems there are 2 other simpler ways to do this on Ubuntu (at least the later versions):
I finally figured out how to do this with the root filesystem (in Ubuntu 11.04)!
The steps for making a system bootable are simple. I used this guide in combination with this guide and a bunch of web searches to figure out how to get it working properly, without bugs.
Summary:
Run:
sudo apt-get install fsprotect apparmor-utils
Save this to
/etc/initramfs-tools/scripts/init-bottom/__rootaufs
. I don't think the name actually matters, but the beginning__
might be used for ordering purposes, so if you change the name, you might want to keep the underscores. (This is a copy of this file.)#!/bin/sh -e case $1 in prereqs) exit 0 ;; esac for x in $(cat /proc/cmdline); do case $x in root=*) ROOTNAME=${x#root=} ;; aufs=*) UNION=${x#aufs=} case $UNION in LABEL=*) UNION="/dev/disk/by-label/${UNION#LABEL=}" ;; UUID=*) UNION="/dev/disk/by-uuid/${UNION#UUID=}" ;; esac ;; esac done if [ -z "$UNION" ]; then exit 0 fi # make the mount points on the init root file system mkdir /aufs /ro /rw # mount read-write file system if [ "$UNION" = "tmpfs" ]; then mount -t tmpfs rw /rw -o noatime,mode=0755 else mount $UNION /rw -o noatime fi # move real root out of the way mount --move ${rootmnt} /ro mount -t aufs aufs /aufs -o noatime,dirs=/rw:/ro=ro # test for mount points on union file system [ -d /aufs/ro ] || mkdir /aufs/ro [ -d /aufs/rw ] || mkdir /aufs/rw mount --move /ro /aufs/ro mount --move /rw /aufs/rw # strip fstab off of root partition grep -v $ROOTNAME /aufs/ro/etc/fstab > /aufs/etc/fstab mount --move /aufs /root exit 0
In
/etc/default/grub
, find the line that starts withGRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT
, and inside the quotes that follow, add the parameteraufs=tmpfs
.Bonus: If you need to occasionally turn off the redirection temporarily, simply remove this argument from the kernel parameter list. You can probably do this by holding the Shift key when the system is booting, to show the GRUB menu; then press e to edit the parameters, and just erase the
aufs=...
parameter from the list.Append these lines to
/etc/sysctl.conf
. (Warning: Potential security risk.)kernel.yama.protected_nonaccess_hardlinks = 0 kernel.yama.protected_sticky_symlinks = 0
Run these lines:
sudo aa-complain dhclient3 sudo chmod 0755 /etc/initramfs-tools/scripts/init-bottom/__rootaufs sudo update-initramfs -k all -u sudo update-grub
If everything went well, when you reboot, you will be doing so into a temporary file system. The RAM part will be at /rw
, and the disk image will be at /ro
, but of course it will be read-only.
Nevertheless, if you have booted into a temporary system but need to make a permanent change, you can re-mount the /ro
file system by saying
sudo mount -o remount,rw /ro
to make it writable, and then you can make whatever modifications needed to that directory.
Yes, by unionfs, see unionfs.filesystems.org. You have mount first read-only filesystem, and as second read-write RAM filesystem through unionfs.
In Ubuntu you can find the unionfs-fuse package, which is another implementation of the same things, but in user space, not as a kernel module.
You can also do this on the device level, without a unionfs like aufs. See device-mapper snapshot-origin
.