I see that the bootup process for my system says it "can't check the
root file system because it's not mounted read-only". [There's a red
star by this line.] Since I generally don't examine carefully the fast
moving bootup lines (and I just found out how to stop them: use Scroll
Lock), I don't know when this started. This line and the red star
might have been there for weeks-- I don't know. [During the last 2
weeks, I've been installing the latest versions of various packages.
And, also during the last 2 weeks, I've installed one or two entirely
new packages that I never had before doing this.]

I know how to check the properties of files and how to change
permissions but I don't know how to make the entire root file system
'read-only'. Where and how do I do that?

[I use Mepis 3.4-3 and my root <in ext3 file system> is in /dev/hda1.
My computer, Mepis, Linux, Firefox, etc. seem to be working fine
inspite of the failure of the bootup process to check the root file
system.]


Thanks,

Stan

To mount the root filesystem read-only, you have to modify the /etc/fstab configuration file.
Open this file and locate the line concerning your root filesystem (should begin with /dev/hda1 / ext3) and add to the 4th column (the options column) the "ro" option. If there are others options, you should delimit these by a comma (,).

Thanks for the help. Here's the first line of my fstab:

# Pluggable devices are handled by uDev, they are not in fstab
/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,noatime 1 1


So I should change 'defaults' to ' ro ' and follow ro with ' ,noatime 1 1 '. Is that correct?

Yes, seems ok to me. You can go on and try with this new option.