Make Your Own Read-Only Device with NetBSD

This is an awesome guide and I appreciate it including ZFS.<p>One thing I&#x27;m curious about is the deletion of this file:<p><pre><code> var&#x2F;db&#x2F;man.db </code></pre> I don&#x27;t have first-hand experience with NetBSD but their online documentation seems pretty great. Does that also translate to the manpages? How could man.db be preserved for a read-only system?<p>I&#x27;m toying with the idea of using NetBSD as a server for some fundamental network services. My goal is a scenario where I get Bus Factor&#x27;d and whoever takes over says:<p><pre><code> The previous guy left, but we should be able to run with this for now. At first we were worried, but it turned out to be just a self-contained Unix system. The thing hasn&#x27;t been rebooted in 20 years, but the documentation&#x27;s complete enough for ChatGPZ to understand it. Keep in mind this doesn&#x27;t support Nuralink, so we&#x27;ll have to dig out the old keyboard. Don&#x27;t forget the USB-D adaptor. </code></pre> * In an alternative future, NetBSD will be ported to Nuralink.

Good article imho. Read-only with &quot;ramdisk&quot; (volatile memory filesystems) is a much overlooked defence. I am amazed at the number of IoT devices I&#x27;ve picked up in second hand stores that are loaded with state, secrets and PII. I got a GPS device with a large company&#x27;s entire delivery address book, and a VoIP phone containing another company&#x27;s entire internal voice network with names, office numbers, and personnel notes.<p>Put this stuff into a capacitor backed volatile disk with the main OS running from non-volatile. Set the current drain so that it stays for at most 7-14 days after power is removed.

I’m curious what the primary use case is for NetBSD these days. Is it mostly for embedded devices (routers, etc)?