read only raspberry

This is a stub article to link to, as we begin building with ideas from various sources

Micro SD card failure is a perennial risk with the Raspberry Pi architecture, and the bane of long-running services using these cheap Single Board Computers (SBCs).

A way to reduce this risk is to reduce the number of writes to the medium. This article signposts to one way to do this, using embedded operating systems. And it discusses techniques for another – reducing the write stress on a regular OS, such as the strongly supported Raspberry Pi OS, formerly known as Raspbian.

Embedded OSes

• Distros
  • see this overview of different types and options for operating system distributions to use on a Pi
• buildroot
  • a way to roll your own
  • SnapOS for snapcast is one example
• Puppy Linux
  • tries to make the best of both worlds, by being read only, until you shut down and maybe want to save your changes
  • not sure whether Pi hardware is supported
    • surely it must be??
  • This is more suited to general computing use cases than dedicated service devices
• Yocto
  • hardcore embedded folk often speak of Yocto
  • or is it too extreme or niche for this requirement?
• ResinOS
  • focussed on docker stacks
• network-appliance-firmware
  • these application specific distros are often designed to be embedded
  • if they happen to do what you want, then great
  • but chances are you are after something a little more generic and multi-purpose

Converting generic OSes

This has the advantage of taking a generic OS that is

• well supported
• has a wide range of packages available

and converting it to read-ony use

RO Raspi OS

Possibly the best supported OS for the Pi, and other than Pi-flavoured Debian, the one with the most software. Sounds like a good candidate to try. Even if it tends to present a bit of a moving target in the the layers it uses, changing between major versions.

Chris Dzombak's Read-Only root article in his Pi reliability series

And add in other less DIY links