Re: 2.2.0 wishlist

Bryn Paul Arnold Jones (bpaj@gytha.demon.co.uk)
Fri, 14 Jun 1996 18:23:15 +0100 (BST)


On Fri, 14 Jun 1996, Robert Glamm wrote:
> > If the undelete stuff was fixed, I'd want to have a cron job that scaned
> > the undeleteable deleted files, and really got rid of them after a set
> > time (depending on your avalable disk space anything from 1 hour to weeks).
> >
> > Also you'd have to make it a real pain for users to undelete stuff if the
> > files arn't part of there quota (ie just keep the file's deletion date
> > under 5 days, and it's never purged, instant free disk space).
>
> Well, is it really necessary to set the timeout at longer than a day
> on deleted files? From when I've wanted to recover files it's usually
> ''oh, crap, I just typed rm -rf on the wrong directory DOH!" and frantically
> hit the break key to stop it before it purges everything; usually my recovery
> time would be less than 15 minutes.

Well yes, you, and me, but what happens if a clueless newbie mails you
saing they just deleted a file that they can't get back, and can you
restore it from a backup for them. Well depending on your habits, with me
for example, they'd get a reply back anything from 10 seconds to a couple
of days later saying that they can just use the undelete command, as long
as it was in there home directory when they deleted it.

> I can see if you wrote a cron job that
> ran at night you might want up to a day to undelete files, but I can't imagine
> a case for a longer recovery period. Of course, I haven't thought about this
> too hard either :)
>

Well having it configurable would be good, tho proberbly not on a per
user basis, and you would proberbly want to have it set at, at least a
day on your managed boxes, but shorter (an hour ? less ?) on your own box.

> > You could make sure it's part of there quota, and it's not a problem,
> > except when you have users mailing that they can't save even though
> > they've got no files in there home directory (though you could allow them
> > access to the purge command in the same way is passwd works (ie 'passwd' is
> > me, 'passwd user' is user, and only root can specify a user name).
>
> Hmm... that's an interesting idea. A quota with soft, hard limits, along with
> an 'undelete' space limit? That would make the undelete feature easier
> to accept, I think. That way the people that didn't want that feature could
> set the 'undelete' space limit to 0.
>

Yep, that would be good too, ok: deleted files are kept around until you
run out of undelete quota space at which time the oldest is removed
first. Deleted files are purged after a configurble time (with a
cron job).

So all we'd need for that, is a little help from the kernel, dealing with
the ext2fs undelete bit, and actually saving it some where (hidden dir ?
somewhere else ?, I'll ask the Ext2fs maintainer what they invisioned;),
everything else can be done in userspace (so minamal bloat for people who
don't like that sort of thing ;).

> --
Bryn

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