On Thu, 24 Jan 2019 09:45:59 +0000, The Natural Philosopher
 declaimed the following:


>
>I will PROBABLY code the website in actual real C for low CPU cycles and
>memory, though it might be PHP.
>

 What features does the web-site need? You might be able to use
something like FLASK (fairly lightweight) or DJANGO (heavier) to code the
site application (both are Python-based). If the unit is only for internal
usage, and relatively low traffic, you might even be able to run using the
"development server" (heavy traffic deployments tend to use nginx (sp?)
and/or apache.

> (b) Whilst still attached to the host computer, edit the
> config files to set up ssh access, wirless networking
>         and a fixed IP address.

 Not with a Windows box, at least... Most if not all of the config files
will be on an EXT# partition, and Windows can not see such (the NOOBS
installer starts on a FAT partition, but during install converts the rest
of the SD card to EXT2/EXT3/EXT4 [I've not kept track of what the current
common variation is]).

> That is, enough to get an accessible bootable headless pi
>  on the network in a 'well known' place?

 Suspect it may be easier to connect to a local router, SSH in to make
configuration changes, then move the unit to the final location.

>5/. Apart from logging issues, I see no real reson why the SD card
>     ever will need to be written to in use, unless I need swap.
>     Has anyone ever tried running a Pi with what amounts to a read only
>     mounted root partition? Can one disable logging?
>
 Pi-Star https://www.pistar.uk/ runs in just that mode (logging goes to
a "ram disk" temp filesystem, and gets rotated periodically).

{USE FIXED WIDTH TO VIEW}
pi-star@pi-star-3b(ro):~$ df
Filesystem     1K-blocks    Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root       15213412 2447856  12111872  17% /
devtmpfs          492508       0    492508   0% /dev
tmpfs             497116       0    497116   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs              16384   13104      3280  80% /run
tmpfs               5120       4      5116   1% /run/lock
tmpfs             497116       0    497116   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs               4096    2176      1920  54% /var/lib/samba/private
tmpfs               1024     464       560  46% /var/cache/samba
tmpfs                 64       0        64   0% /var/lib/php5/sessions
tmpfs               1024       0      1024   0% /var/lib/nginx/body
tmpfs                 16       4        12  25% /var/lib/ntp
tmpfs                 16       4        12  25% /var/lib/logrotate
tmpfs                 16       0        16   0% /var/lib/dhcp
tmpfs                 16       0        16   0% /var/lib/sudo
tmpfs                 16       4        12  25% /var/lib/dhcpcd5
tmpfs              65536   15252     50284  24% /var/log
tmpfs              65536       8     65528   1% /tmp
tmpfs              16384       0     16384   0% /var/tmp
/dev/mmcblk0p1     64456   22312     42144  35% /boot
pi-star@pi-star-3b(ro):~$
pi-star@pi-star-3b(ro):~$ ls /var/log
apt         daemon.log.1     kern.log     mail.log.1     php5-fpm.log
unattended-upgrades
auth.log    daemon.log.2.gz  kern.log.1   mail.warn      php5-fpm.log.1
wtmp
auth.log.1  debug            mail.err     mail.warn.1    pi-star wtmp.1.gz
boot.log    debug.1          mail.err.1   messages       samba
btmp        dpkg.log         mail.info    messages.1     syslog
btmp.1.gz   dpkg.log.1       mail.info.1  messages.2.gz  syslog.1
daemon.log  exim4            mail.log     nginx          syslog.2.gz
pi-star@pi-star-3b(ro):~$

 Of course, this does mean that if one needs to review the logs, one
will need to SSH into the running system -- can't shutdown and move it to
someplace to examine it as the logs will be lost.


--
 Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN
 wlfraed@ix.netcom.com    HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05