Re: PATCH - ext2fs privacy (i.e. secure deletion) patch

From: Valdis . Kletnieks
Date: Wed Feb 04 2004 - 12:16:52 EST


On Wed, 04 Feb 2004 12:05:07 EST, Bill Davidsen said:

> It would be useful to have this as a directory option, so that all files
> in directory would be protected. I think wherever you do it you have to
> prevent hard links, so that unlink really removes the data.

This of course implies that 'chattr +s' (or whatever it was) has to fail
if the link count isn't exactly one. Also makes for lots of uglyiness
if it's a directory option - you then have to walk all the entries in the
directory and check *their* link counts. Bad Juju doing it in the kernel
if you have a directory with a million entries - and racy as hell if you
do it in userspace.

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