Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 6 Nov 1998 08:40:01 +0100 (CET) | From | Rik van Riel <> | Subject | Re: swapfile security weakeness |
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On 6 Nov 1998, H. Peter Anvin wrote: > > On Thu, 5 Nov 1998, Jakub Vlasek wrote: > > > > >i've found that active swapfile could be deleted, which is > > > > KUDOS TO YOU!!!! I actually *DID* that about a year and a half > > ago. I had 2 swap files and didn't need them both. I swapoff'd > > one of them and deleted the wrong one. As a result I got major > > kernel panics until the system froze, then when I rebooted I had > > hard disk corruption on partitions that weren't even mounted in > > swapon should keep a handle on the inode, which means the file won't > be removed from the physical media even if it is unlinked (just like > open files aren't.)
Unfortunately, there are a few issues with that: - it doesn't work on inodeless FSes (msdosfs) - you can't swapoff() a deleted file, leaving minor fs corruption on reboot (and major corruption on umsdos and the like) - since you can't swapoff() the deleted file, you can't reclaim the disk space
This basically means that we have a real problem at hand that should be fixed.
Rik -- typing slowly because my kbd is dvorak since sun 19:40... +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Linux memory management tour guide. H.H.vanRiel@phys.uu.nl | | Scouting Vries cubscout leader. http://www.phys.uu.nl/~riel/ | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+
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