NYCPHP Meetup

[Edward J. Weinberg]

On Fri, 2007-09-14 at 09:36 -0400, Norman ONeil wrote:

> Thank you Soooooo much. That solves my problem. 


Typically the reason to run a server off a CD (live cd) is for security
reasons.  Basically since it is a "read only" media it is harder to
compromise than a system with the OS on a hard drive.  Putting it on a
USB drive would compromise that advantage.  If the site is broken into
there is a limit to what can be changed.  If you put it on a writable
media, more can be changed.

The only other reason I could see for running off a live cd is for demo
purposes.   You do still need to think about security.  Just because you
can produce a working XP live cd does not mean that it is secure.

There are some issues with using Joomla this way.  As the last poster
pointed out, you would need space for your database to store
information.  On Content Management Systems like Jumla all the content
is stored by default in the database.  That means that if your site is
compromised, the site can still be defaced.  It means that you can
easily restore the system by wiping out the database, but you would
loose all your content.  You would still have your skin and your basic
site, but it would be like restoring your site to it's initial
condition.  You would loose any content added after the CD was burned.

If your reason of a "live cd" is security, and it is going to run only
or mainly a Joomla website, why not use a Linux live CD?  There is more
expertise available to make a secure site that runs Linux from a CD.
Joomla is the same and once the site was running you would need little
or no Linux specific knowledge to run it.
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