Anyone using Shadow files (as temp files) for critical apps?

I would like to acquire some help on getting a shadow file process
going, I have searched for this everywhere and can't be able to find
a good tutorial. All I've found is:

% hdiutil attach oed.dmg -shadow /tmp/oed.shadow -noverify

I created a shadow file for a mounted drive (created from a .dmg).
My problems are:

1) the changes seem to get written to the shadow file, but once I
can't seem to be able to delete the shadow file to get rid of the
changes..

2) I saw someone do this for a program and they were running the
shadow file for a mounted drive, that's why I wanted to do it for a
mounted drive too (or I could do it for a folder???)... the problem
with the mounted drive is that when I restart, the drive is gone and
I have to recreated by the .dmg. (what's the point of this?)

- I guess once I have a software (folder) that I don't want changed I
can create a .dmg and launch the mount, then use the shadow file like
that.. (is that how it would be most useful? are there better ways to
use this?)

Please help

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I would like to acquire some help on getting a shadow file processgoing,

Why ? I doubt that more than five people who read this group even
know what a shadow file is. The answer to the question in your 'Subject'
header is probably 'no'.

Be aware that shadow technology is already built
into Apple's Netboot services. If you're using Netboot (the only good
reason I can think of to use shadow files) then you don't need to set this
up manually.

Probably because nobody does it. It's used /by/
some services Apple provides, but unless you know a lot about the Mac OS
you're probably not going to get this working properly and don't need
to.

/tmp/oed.shadow -noverify

That should work.

written to the shadow file, but once I

You don't. Once the shadow file is detached, it can be

Ah. Okay, I'm starting to get to the bottom of why you want to do
this.

An application folder doesn't need writing to. Generally, your
applications are stored in a folder where only administrators have write
privileges, so a mundane non-administrator user can't change them. That's
all the protection you need.

For those few badly-written applications
(games, mostly) that expect to be able to change files in the same folder
as they are (or subfolders of that folder) you can probably fool them with
using aliases, to move the folders which they want to change to a place
that a mundane user can change.

Simon.

 

There's an example of shadow file usage in the hdiutil man pages. I'm
not sure of what other uses the average user might make of shadow files
though, other than to save space and time. If you only want to "write
protect" a directory, you can do that with chmod or chown.

Or is this an OS 9 thing? Mike Bombitch has a way of running Classic
from a shadow file:
http://www.bombich.com/software/shadowclassic.html
that might be of interest.

If you're only having problems with one app, there's a list of nasty
ones here, and how to fix 'em:
http://www.macos.utah.edu/macosx_crappyapps.html