> > As we promised on the linux-ext4 list on October 31, here is the patch > > that adds secure deletion via a trash-bin functionality for ext4. It is a > > compromise solution that combines secure deletion with the trash-bin support > > (the latter had been requested by even more people than the former :-). > > Given that almost all of the code for this uses vfs interfaces and > only a couple of simple filesystem hooks, is there any reason for > this being ext4 specific? i.e. why aren't you hooking the vfs layer > so we get a single undelete/secure delete implementation for all > filesystems? You are right. Actually, we mentioned it as a benefit number 4 of this approach in the original post. Most of the code is not file-system--specific and can be used by any other (all other?) file system(s). The only complication is that only ext2/3/4 and reiser file systems already support the per-file secure deletion and undelete attributes. Since ext4 is in early development now, we believe it'd be easier to get such code into ext4 than into the main-line VFS. If there's enough interested among the kernel maintainers, we'd be happy to move this functionality to the VFS and provide f/s hooks for secure-deletion/trash-bin. I guess, the right thing to do would be to move the common trash-bin (tb.c and tb.h) code into the /fs and /include/linux directories. Also, VFS would require just a couple of trivial changes to support something like '-o trashbin' mount-time option for all file systems. In addition, individual file systems may support per-file attributes for this (e.g., ext2/3/4). Since I just postponed my moving house (I am joining IBM soon) I think we may have time to try it out this week. Nikolai. --------------- Filesystems and Storage Laboratory, Stony Brook University - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ext4" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
