[rb-general] How to modify mount-time and write when you write in a file system

[Ximin Luo]

Daniel Shahaf:
> Andres Pavez wrote on Tue, 11 Jul 2017 16:36 -0700:
>> Problem: during the creation/reproduction of the custom live cd, when
>> i use "mount' to mount the filesystem to copy my sw inside of the
>> rootfs (after unsquashfs) i noted usign tune2fs every time i mont the
>> file system the values "last mount time", "last write time" and
>> "Lifetime writes" changes and i don't know how to fix it.
>>
>> With tune2fs i can only  fix the "Mount Count", but no the mount time
>> and writes.
>>
> 
> Perhaps, instead of backdating the metadata, teach diffoscope to parse
> the metadata, so diffoscope's output would pretty-print the metadata
> diff?  If it's just those three values that differ, presumably that wouldn't
> make the output much harder to audit for your downstream users.
> 

This approach, of adding exceptions to diffoscope and still calling the result "reproducible", isn't scalable (what if you need to put the result inside more containers?) So I wouldn't recommend this.

@Andres: Have you tried `mount -o ro` to mount read-only? `man mount` also suggests some other options, in case that doesn't work:

-r, --read-only

Mount the filesystem read-only.  A synonym is -o ro.

Note that, depending on the filesystem type, state and kernel behavior, the
system may still write to the device.  For example, ext3 and ext4 will replay
the journal if the filesystem is dirty.  To prevent this kind of write access,
you may want to mount an ext3 or ext4 filesystem with the ro,noload mount
options or set the block device itself to read-only mode, see the blockdev(8)
command.

X

-- 
GPG: ed25519/56034877E1F87C35
GPG: rsa4096/1318EFAC5FBBDBCE
https://github.com/infinity0/pubkeys.git