Hello there. I'm doing a college project that will build a liveCD (Linux) and have been unable to reach a conclusion on the following topic: The liveCD must not be allowed to write to the hard disk (lab machines are Wiin2k) in case they get erased. One way of doing this might be to append the ide-disk.c file in /usr/src/linux/drivers/ide I'm concerned that ZIP drives might fall into the same category, or are they treated in the same manner as floppies? I am aware of the hdparm utility which disables writing to ATA/IDE disks, and also of the fact that appending the ide-disk source and building a new kernel module would still allow access to SCSI disks. The idea probably sounds ridiculous, and I'm aware there are several better means of doing this. Would anyone have some advice about how best to approach a rewrite of ide-disk.c or better still, an alternate means of achieving this?

Regards,

Donal

I think that is you dump 'ro' in the options section for the parition in fstab that it mounts it read only - I couldn't be 100% certain about though, you'd have to try it / get somebody else's opinion.