Herbert Graf(mailinglist4@farcite.net) is reported to have said:
> 
> On Fri, 2008-03-07 at 20:41 -0500, Wayne Topa wrote:
> > > How does a hard drive tell an OS it's write protected? Is it even
> > > possible?
> > 
> > What your looking for is in man 8 mount.
> > 
> > mount -r /dev/sda1
> > 
> > -r     Mount the file system read-only. A synonym is -o ro. 
> 
> Any pointers on how I would go about doing this for something that is
> automounted by default (I'm using Ubuntu), without affecting all devices
> that are automounted?

If it's automounted it should /etc/fstab.  Comment that entry,
reboot then do the mount command.  If it's not in /etc/fstab find out
whats mounting it using dmesg.  

dmesg |less |grep (whatever the device is called).

To find out what the device is try the df command.
~# df
Filesystem        Size  Used Avail Use%                                    Mounted on
/dev/sda5          49G 8954M   39G 17.8 [######..........................] /
udev               10M   80k   10M  0.8 [................................] /dev
tmpfs            1007M     0 1007M  0.0 [................................] /dev/shm
/dev/sda7          30G 1434M   28G  4.7 [##..............................] /emul/chroot-lenny-i386
/dev               10M   80k   10M  0.8 [................................] /emul/chroot-lenny-i386/dev
/home            8038M  829M 7127M 10.3 [###.............................] /emul/chroot-lenny-i386/home
/root              49G 8954M   39G 17.8 [######..........................] /emul/chroot-lenny-i386/root
/tmp               49G 8954M   39G 17.8 [######..........................] /emul/chroot-lenny-i386/tmp
/usr/share/fonts   49G 8954M   39G 17.8 [######..........................] /emul/chroot-lenny-i386/usr/share/fonts
/dev/sda10       8038M  829M 7127M 10.3 [###.............................] /home
tmpfs            1007M 8192B 1007M  0.0 [................................] /lib/init/rw

dmesg |less |grep (whatever the device is called).

All this assunes you are using the CLI or in an xterm in Gnome or
KDE.

Wayne

-- 
Real computer scientists despise the idea of actual hardware.  Hardware
has limitations, software doesn't.  It's a real shame that Turing
machines are so poor at I/O.
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