Subj : Thoughts on firewall
To   : Angus Mcleod
From : Deuce
Date : Thu Jan 27 2005 10:22 am

  Re: Thoughts on firewall
  By: Angus Mcleod to All on Thu Jan 27 2005 09:53:00

 > The second (and default) option would boot to a RAM-disk and run entirely
 > from there with no access to the HD.  If the machine was compromised
 > (somehow) the boot drive could not be accessed so you could eliminate the
 > infection with a simple reboot.
 > 
 > To prevent access to the HD, you build the kernel for the RAM-disk withOUT
 > support for IDE, and withOUT support for modules.  Since the booting of
 > the kernel and copying of the /dev/initrd's contents is done by the boot
 > loader (and not the kernel) the kernel should not then need IDE
 > compatability.
 > 
 > Would that work?

If you're using SCSI drives, you have another option... build the system with
two SCSI drives... one with the swap and /tmp (mounted noexec of course) on it,
and the other with a switch on it's read-only jumper. Of course, the second
drive is optional, but having /tmp in memory has always bugged me.

I've never seens a SCSI drive without a read-only jumper (And I've never seen a
IDE drive *with* one!)  This way, you can change it readily, have access to the
whole system when needed etc.

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