"Goop proof" LINUX

Written by Henry Davis December 08, 2009 Hits: 455 Favorites

1.5 (2)

LINUX has many advantages over Windows for embedded applications. But protecting the system from hacks and attacks can be challenging.

As an alternative to the bootable secondary drive, you can use a thumb-drive along with the CD-ROM.

Boot from CD and store your data on the thumb drive -- some big box stores offer a 2GB flash drive for $10 for Christmas, while another store has nice 4GB ones for about $30.

A simple, low cost way to keep junk from piling up on your system. Oh, the same technique works for LINUX in general.

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Overall:

1.5

Pro-Linux Campaign????

Overall:

1.0

Reviewed by Muhammad Maiz Ghauri
March 21, 2010

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I think that the same trick can be applied via creating an XP-Live CD. But the question is this - Is it the right solution?

Booting OSes from USB Drives in order to protect data doesn't seem to be a nice solution. One can argue with the pros and cons of storing data in USB vs. storing in hard-drive (multi-partition support, etc)

It would be more appropriate to get more hands on the OS (either Linux or Windows), and securing data via. other techniques such as encryption, user permissions, etc.). Ultimately, it comes up to the end-user to be a good administrator.

BTW - No offense intended by the title of the comment! Many people don't know the limits of the level of protection provided by their OSes.

Article was a bit hard to follow

Overall:

2.0

Reviewed by Austin Morgan
December 31, 2009

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I am afraid I was not able to follow the thread of this article. While using a read only filesystem and storing personal data on a flash disk is a good solution for some issues, I can not figure out how embedded comes in to play here.

I can not remember the last time I had an embedded device with a CD/DVD drive that was not a set top box. Also "protecting the system from hacks and attacks can be challenging" indicate that this system is deployed and not on an isolated network next to your desktop.

Most systems now boot from USB, in this case you can create 2 partitions, the root fs mounted readonly and the dynamic partition which is mounted read write. As you pointed out large Flash Sticks are cheap now. You can even use unionfs to make it look like the read-only root fs is read/write. It should be noted that using a flash stick, or CD will significantly effect the speed of your system due to inherent bottlenecks.

I agree that cruft build-up can be an issue while developing for an embedded Linux device, I would suggest looking at build tools to mitigate this risk. A good set of build tools and an NFS share can be lifesavers in this respect.

Written by :

Henry Davis