Hi guys (first thread)

I'm running several terminals with a bare-bones Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on them (command line install + X). They are subject to public abuse, and as such cannot rely on being powered down in a proper manner.

What I would like help with is which settings to use with mount and /etc/fstab to give the best reliability under these circumstances? The overriding importance is that the system successfully boot, as generally speaking I can cope with corrupt files once my own programs are running.

Currently I'm using ext4 with the default settings. From man mount I know that means journalling and barrier are enabled, but is there anything else I can do to ensure reliability?

Thanks!

you need to move your important files/programs to another (readonly?) partition therefore they cannot be damaged. The public drive can be cleaned any time (and reformatted, if required)

So, boot from the one partition but make sure all the writes are performed on another? Fair enough.

Is it possible to mount the /root partition (where /bin, etc are) as read only without problems? What would happen to all the log files Linux generates? Or can that be solved by symlinking /var and /tmp to directories on the writeable partition?

/var/log can be another partition, also /tmp (see tmpfs). otherwise yes, you can try that (for example live CD-s are running on a read-only device).

I rearranged the partitions so I have an OS partition and a writeable partition, and also mounted /tmp as tmpfs. I've symlinked /var to a directory on the writeable partition.

There's still quite a bit of writing going on on the OS partition though. For one, the MAC address of the machine gets cached in /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net-rules.

Which other directories should I symlink to the writeable partition?

(duplicate post)

I don't know of any software that can preserve the files/settings on a system and revert them on reboot (like you see on Windows), but one thing that comes to mind is...

Have you considered making the systems headless and network bootable? Make them bootable only on a network connection, using a gigabit internal link so the machines will boot off of another server. That way the settings are restored on reboot and nothing is overwritten should someone mess with the system.

Oh, I wish I could net boot, but these terminals aren't networked.