Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: PATCH - ext2fs privacy (i.e. secure deletion) patch | From | Valdis.Kletnieks@vt ... | Date | Wed, 04 Feb 2004 23:38:09 -0500 |
| |
On Wed, 04 Feb 2004 18:47:54 EST, Bill Davidsen said: > > This of course implies that 'chattr +s' (or whatever it was) has to fail > > if the link count isn't exactly one. > > Do you disagree that the count does need to be one?
I'm not prepared to say that there's no scenario where we *dont* care how many links there are, as long as the file *does* get wiped when the last one goes away.
The MH mail handler stores each message in a file - so a mail message is easily stored in multiple folders by simply using multiple hard links. I could easily see having mail that I want to +s and go away when I remove it from the last folder it was in....
> I agree with everything you said, "useful" doesn't always map to "easy." > But if you agree that the count needs to be one on files, then you could > also fail if you tried to add it to a directory which was not empty.
Yes you could. The question is whether that's a desired semantic or not.
> In case I didn't make it clear, the use I was considering was to create > a single directory in which created files would really go away when > deleted. I hadn't considered doing it after files were present, what you > say about overhead is clearly an issue. I think I could even envision > some bizarre race conditions if the kernel had to do marking of each > file, so perhaps it's impractical.
As I said, ugly and murky....
> But what happens when the 'setgid' bit is put on a directory? At least > in 2.4 existing files do NOT get the group set, only files newly > created. So unless someone feels that's a bug which needs immediate > fixing, I can point to it as a model by which the feature could be > practically implemented.
Ahh.. but now you're suggesting a different model than "directory must be empty". Obviously more discussion of what we *want* it to do is needed ;) [unhandled content-type:application/pgp-signature] | |