The Easily Recoverable CD-ROM Booted Linux Internet Server: A How-To

The purpose of this paper is to detail the general steps to create a read-only Internet Server providing DNS and static web pages (bind and Apache). While the capabilities of such a system are limited, the applications for a system which can serve DNS or static web pages and is difficult or nearly impossible to deface (and easy to recover with a simple reboot) are many. Schools or small companies whose external DNS and static web pages change infrequently are examples of sites where such servers might find useful application. Separation of these vulnerable services to a dedicated, low hardware, low cost Linux server running off of a CD-ROM or a write protected floppy in conjunction with a CDROM, would allow other, more valuable dynamic services (mail and FTP as examples) to be segregated to machines which therefore would not be vulnerable to DNS buffer overruns or common web server exploits.