[Wylug-help] Readonly option in hdparm

[Jim Jackson]

On Tue, 5 Aug 2003, Julian Church wrote:

> > If this is not possible with a conventional hard drive, is it possible
> > with
> > a compact flash card + IDE adaptor?
>
> The IDE specification doesn't include any provision for write-protecting
> drives.
>
> Some CF manufacturers offer write protectable cards, but when used in an
> IDE adapter they don't work as predicted.  There's no mechanism in the
> kernel to deal with a protected IDE device. So attempting to write to the
> disc seems to work whenever you try it, even though the data never makes it
> onto the CF.  I seem to remember that this can lead to unpredictable
> behaviour later, when the kernel's idea of what's on the disc doesn't match
> what it finds there.

If you mount the filesystem read-only, then the kernel will know it's
readonly! And will reality and kernel will match.