Just a question...maybe for experts, not like me :P
 

I wondered if it is possible to make a bootdisk for a server...
I explain myself : Configure a server (apache, php, mysql, firewall, etc.), with a good kernel, and a good configuration (secured, I mean).

Now, you have all your system on your hard drive, but you want to make it accessible to everybody (it's a server, you see...), but you don't want to make your hard drive accessible...

The question is : Is it possible to make a bootable cdrom with all you configured, only a cdrom with a mouse and a keyboard, and that is your server...

I don't know if you will understand what I want to say, but excuse me, I'm french, so English is not a language easily speakable and writeable for me...

I think there's a version of linux called knoppix (or something similar) which runs in memory and is booted from a cd.

Check it out.

the only knoppix stuff that is in memory is the /home and other
necessarily writable stuff, like /var. you can customize your own knoppix.
i do, often.
i had one knoppix cdrom i made that downloaded stuff from usenet, and
since the /home dir was in ram, i could only download until ram was full,
then the programs crashed. i have a few with a bunch of MAME games
and mp3's on them too. i stripped out a bunch of stuff and got the knoppix
cdrom down to 400 megs, so i was able to put 300 compressed megs
of stuff i wanted on the cd. i guess now i could make knoppix dvd's with
several divx movies too.

In theory yes it is possible. But the content you could serve from such a system would be limited to what was written on the CD only. A more pratical way would be to use a second cdrom drive that holds a disc which is mounted when the system boots. You could then hold much more data, and could change the content by unmounting, changing the cd and remounting.

What you said, burnpile, seems to be interesting, but I can't understand everything you said...

Could you explain it to me more precisely ?
Maybe by mail ?

Certainly, I'll try to take each point and explain it further.

After you add a functional OS with network services and a few administrative tasks, you would be left with only a small space for other files.

What I mean here is to use TWO CD-Rom drives. The bootable one which contains the operating system can remain in the first drive, while the second drive can hold whatever data you choose to write to the disk, then simply mounted with options for global read permissions.

Any time you need to update the data that you are serving , such as changes to an online database or updating a website, simply burn a new CD, and replace the existing secondary CD so that the content changes.

An example for all of this:
You download a distro that runs from a cd. Make modifications so that it can act as a Network File Server. Burn the CD, and boot the machine with no hard disks using it. You then put the first Red Hat 9 installation CD in the second drive, so users can preform a network install. When it is required, you change to the second Red Hat 9 CD and remount the CD drive and the users may continue, without you having to reboot the server. The same scenario for the third CD. You could then have a customized CD with applications some of the users would need, such as CAD software, or security updates, or any other content.

I hope this makes it more clear.

Yes, that is more clear !!

Thanks !
I had my answer, after all !!

you are most welcome. If you get something like this up and running, please keep us updated. Myself I find the security aspects alone on this setup make it something to try out, and the cost should be very minimal.