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

Theodore Ts'o
2004-02-04T06:31:11Z

On Wed, Feb 04, 2004 at 01:43:18AM +0100, Pavel Machek wrote:
> > All that said, the user's content is something that the user could be
> > considered responsible for erasing themselves. The meta-data is the part
> > of the file which they dont' have access to, so having privacy
> > capabilities for meta-data erasure is a requirement. User data
> > erasure... I can take it or leave it. I think it should be automatic if
> > at all, but I'm not really that bothered about it.
>
> Well, doing it on-demand means one less config option, and possibility
> to include it into 2.7... It should be easy to have tiny patch forcing
> that option always own for your use...

The obvious thing to do would be to make it a mount option, so that
(a) recompilation is not necessary in order to use the feature, and
(b) the feature can be turned on or off on a per-filesystem feature.
In 2.6, it's possible to specify certain mount option to be specifed
by default on a per-filesystem basis (via a new field in the
superblock).

So if you do things that way, then secure deletion would take place
either if the secure deletion flag is set (so it can be enabled on a
per-file basis), or if the filesystem is mounted with the
secure-deletion mount option.

- Ted