User guide

6: Customizing the System Configuration
DC 900-1333Q 161
6.2 Modifying Server Files
The Freeway server makes use of read-only partitions and RAM-disk partitions specifi-
cally so the server can be switched off at any time without damage to the disk drive.
Operational files are stored in the read-only partitions and copied to the RAM-disk par-
titions at boot time.
Earlier in this chapter we mentioned that the server configuration files were located in
the
/tmp/boot/ directory. However, this directory is located in a RAM-disk partition in
Freeway memory and only exists when the Freeway is powered on. All the files residing
in this directory are copied from a read-only partition on the Freeway disk drive during
boot up. Specifically, the files residing in
/tmp/boot are copied from the /usr/local/free-
way/boot.src/
directory on the Freeway disk drive. (Note: boot.src is a directory, not a file as
the name may imply.) If the Freeway was booted over the network, the files in
/tmp/boot/
are copied from the boot server via FTP.
The following sections provide information on modifying Freeway server configuration
files and saving them in the read-only partition of the disk drive.
6.2.1 File Transfers Across the Network
You may use any network file transfer method (fetch, FTP, NFS, rsync, scp, etc.) to
transfer files to the Freeway server, providing that the transfer method is not blocked by
a firewall. The most common way of updating files is to transfer the files to the
/tmp/boot
read-write directory, and using the Freeway menu update method (5-3-3) to copy the
updated files to the non-volatile area as described in Section 6.2.2.
You can always transfer files from anywhere on the Freeway server disk drive to another
system. However, in order to transfer files from another system directly into a read-only
partition on the Freeway server, you must first login to the Freeway BSD shell and tem-
porarily mount the partition as read-write. After transferring the files, remember to
mount the partition back to read-only.