[BusyBox] /etc/shadow question--More Ideas

[Gene Cumm]

Nick Fedchik wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Feb 2003, Nick Fedchik wrote:
> 
> 
>>Now I see only one solution - to do a patch for BusyBox to predefine
>>another way for "shadow" database.
> 
> Patch bb-shadow-path.patch is availiable at
> http://www.fedchik.org.ua/linux/busybox/
> 

What about using a tarball, if your busybox is so equipped?  You could 
keep the old files in the ramdisk and store your newer files in a 
tarball, unarchiving during the boot sequence.  I think this is a more 
robust idea than 2 ramdisks.  It will allow you to use less ram or 
easily migrate to another system other than ramdisks easily.

Another solution is to have a barebones etc directory on the root 
ramdisk and a good ramdisk mounted to etc by init.

Note: I dislike using ramdisks anymore for several reasons.
1)I can use a file archive, like tar, to store my roots.
2)Current loopback support umount's only about 1/2 the time with 
resonable speed.
Thinking about it, if I had to use ramdisks, i'd build scripts to 
automatically copy to a ramdisk then mount and and then umount and copy 
back for small ones but i'd rather use tarballs.