> Ben Mord said: > > >Ah. In that case, you can use something considerably less powerful than > >VMWare. All you need is a machine configured to boot from CD-ROM and use > >a RAM disk for scratch space. Numerous Linux distros are available that > >let you boot a stateless but functional system from CD-ROM. > > But RAM is expensive, and the directory structures of many systems (e.g. > Windows) are not sufficiently organized and standardized to make this > combination of bootable CDs and RAM drives practical. Even if you are > fortunate enough to be using Linux (or another FHS-compliant *nix), you > still can't fit a lot on a CD. Its not unusual today to have gigabytes of > static multimedia content on the web server. This particular problem can be > alleviated somewhat by using DVDs, but this is a temporary solution at best > which will become outdated quickly as our data requirements grow and hard > drives become cheaper. So, just write-protect the hard disk for partitions that are static. I seem to recall an article on this (early 80's, Byte magazine, perhaps?) for BBS systems or for testing unknown (perhaps trojan horse) software. - George -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- George Dinwiddie gdinwiddieat_private The gods do not deduct from man's allotted span those hours spent in sailing. http://www.Alberg30.org/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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