Re: ext2 not NULLing deleted files?

Mark H. Wood (mwood@IUPUI.Edu)
Fri, 17 Aug 2001 12:40:58 -0500 (EST)


On 17 Aug 2001, Robert Love wrote:
> On 17 Aug 2001 09:38:10 +0200, Enver Haase wrote:
> > I just recognized there's an "undelete" now for ext2 file systems [a KDE
> > app].
> >
> > "The Other OS" in its professional version does of course clear the deleted
> > blocks with 0's for security reasons; I would have bet a thousand bucks Linux
> > would do so, too [seems I should have read the source code, good thing no-one
> > wanted to take on the bet :) ].
>
> By "The Other OS" I assume you mean NT. NT does _not_ zero files on
> delete, either with NTFS or anything else. It merely unlinks them like
> any other OS. I can't think of anything that nullifies files, except
> utilities meant solely to do that (often called "sweeping").

VMS. "DELETE/ERASE FOO.BAR" I don't recall whether it's done by the
filesystem code or by the DELETE command in userspace, but I'm guessing
it's built into FILES-11. (Sorry, my Gray Wall is at home.)

> Do you have any idea how long it would take to zero files? If you
> removed even a moderately sized directory, it would take a _very long_
> time.

That's why it's optional.

-- 
Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer   mwood@IUPUI.Edu
Make a good day.

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