writeprotection of unmounted mountpoints automaitcally - possible??

[Paul Howarth]

Alexander Raab wrote:
> Paul Howarth wrote:
> 
>> On Mon, 2005-01-17 at 22:37 +0100, Alexander Raab wrote:
>>  
>>
>>> Yes, I am running this as root. It's an automatical-backup. Sometimes 
>>> I need the disk at an other place. So the backup runs into the 
>>> directory not at the disk.
>>>   
>>
>>
>> Presumably this automated backup is running out of a script? If so, why
>> not just put a test at the start of the script to check if the drive is
>> mounted?
>>
>> Paul.
>>  
>>
> Sure, thats a workaround.
> I was looking for a solution of the whole problem.

SInce your script is running as root, there's not a lot you can do, at 
least not permissions-wise. I wonder if you could do something like 
create a small loopback filesystem (or small partition) containing just 
an empty directory, and have that mounted read-only on your mount point. 
If you mounted your USB drive read-write on top of that, it'd be 
writable but otherwise not even root could write. Worth a try.

Paul.