Re: Advice on Compact Flash Operation required

[Jamie C. <jca...@we...>]

On Tue, 2003-04-08 at 21:04, Thomas P. Jones wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> I'm currently setting up a linux unit to boot and operate 
> from a compact flash disk (SanDisk).
> I'd like to use webmin to configure/monitor this unit.
> 
> The main goal is to reduce any writes caused by 
> webmin to the compact flash disk -  since it has a
> limited life time regarding writes to it. So any temporary
> files created during the operation of webmin I'd like
> to reduce or eliminate.
> 
> I'll be putting /tmp and /var to a RAM Filesystem so
> that will help there for any writes webmin makes
> to those dirs.
> 
> The other main thing I can think of regarding webmin
> is the creation/deletion of lock files by the lock_file and
> unlock_file functions. My idea here is to modify these
> functions to create/delete this lock file from under the 
> /tmp/.webmin dir (ie the pathname of the file with the
> .lock extension could be created with the root dir
> being /tmp/.webmin instead of /. 
> eg /tmp/.webmin/etc/resolv.conf.lock instead of
> /etc/resolv.conf.lock)
> 
> Is there any other element of webmin that I have
> overlooked that should need changing as well ?
> 
> I'd be interested in any advice you may have on 
> this matter. Thanks a lot.

Sounds like quite an interesting project .. Anyway, the most commonly
written-to files by webmin are :

- Temp files in /tmp/.webmin
- Lock files just about anywhere, like /etc/passwd.lock
- Logs and the PID file in /var/webmin
- Some files in /etc/webmin, such as the per-module config files.
However, these are nowhere near as frequently modified as the first
three ..
- The webmin root directory /usr/libexec/webmin. This is never changed
unless a clone of a module is created..

So it looks like you have the important ones covered.

 - Jamie