Does Dietpi Have Overlayfs Feature?

I have seen that raspian-lite has a overlayfs feature to make the pi’s fs read only? Is there such feature available in dietpi? I tried to use dietpi-drive_manager to turn the fs read only, however, it only allows me to change the /boot partition, but not the / fs. It keeps telling me drive is busy.

Welcome to our community. We don’t have such a feature out of the box. But you could have a look to following topic

Thanks, i’ll take a look. Dietpi should add this feature. It is a great feature for people who want to lock down the pi and prevent write cycles to the sd card.

you simply could use a USB pen stick instead of a SD card :wink:

I just installed it, and it seems working.
I don’t understand how do rootwork work? I run rootwork, and then it goes to chroot(/overlay/lower)
is /overlay/lower is where my actual file system located?

If I need to change the setting in my GUI environment, how do I do that? I have LXQt installed.

What is the exact challange using rootwork? Usually your system will be fully within r/o mode. To be able to do permanent changes or updates or to install stuff, you can use rootwork to enable the r/w mode. Once done, leave the mode using exit and you are back on your r/o system.

I found a bit difficult to change settings in GUI such as LXQt. For example, if I want to add or remove a bookmark in Chromium, I need to use terminal execute rootwork and then run the command chromium-browser in order to change the setting there instead of double click the chromium on the GUI desktop. It is not a big deal but a bit inconvenience. Overall, the program works well with dietpi.

Well that’s what a r/o file system is at the end. Your system is basically blocked for changes. :wink:

Yes. It works exactly as the way it supposed to be.
I believe the program is good, but it will be awesome for the on and off switch a bit easier, similar to raspian lite, where you can just turn it on and of in the setting and then reboot.

Feel free to open such a request on the GitHub repository for chesty/overlayroot. :slight_smile:

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