Re: ext4 features

Lew Palm
2006-07-05T13:35:57Z

Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
> The old novell model is simple. When someone unlinks a file, don't
> delete it, just mv it to another special directory called DELETED.SAV.
> Then setup the
> fs space allocation to reuse these files when the drive fills up by
> oldest files first. It's very simple. Then you have a salvagable file
> system.

A complete foolproof car is a car with a maximum speed of 0 mph.
As a user I give commands to my computer, for example an order to delete a
file. And this is what I expect it to do.
If I want it to move a file to another position in the filesystem, I would
use another command. I don't want my operating system to josh me, that's why
I use Linux.
Stealthy keeping of deleted files somewhere is a security black hole.

But accidents happen. Hardware perishes, users are making mistakes, sometimes
coffee is pouring...
That's why we backup important data regulary.
A not-really-deleting-filesystem wouldn't relieve us of that duty, but would
make a system more insecure and ambiguous.

Lew