Re: [patch] rm can have undesired side-effects
- From: Daniel Valencia <fetrovsky@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 08:16:40 -0800 (PST)
Actually, I would like to support this motion... Thinking over the possible behaviours of -P is to sit in a room saying "to delete or not to delete..." If you think it over from a higher perspective, "The UNIX Way" (TM) is to have individual commands for specific tasks and to extract tasks from commands that have gotten too complex... and I think this is the case of rm... a "shred" command should be added that has the following behaviour:
if the file is not writable, return with error.
if the file has multiple links, and option -f was not specified, return with error.
overwrite the file.
optionally, unlink the file.
Additionally, -P should either be rm'ed from rm, or added as a backwards compatibility hack that calls "shred" and returns with error every time the latter does.
These are my 1.99 cents.
- Daniel
----- Original Message ----
From: Tim Clewlow <tim1timau@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Bakul Shah <bakul@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; Doug Barton <dougb@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: delphij@xxxxxxxxxxx; perryh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx; freebsd-hackers@xxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Monday, October 30, 2006 12:20:33 PM
Subject: Re: [patch] rm can have undesired side-effects
--- Bakul Shah <bakul@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Sorry if I tuned in late:-)
I vote for taking *out* -P. It is an ill-designed
feature.
Or if you keep it, also add it to mv, cp -f & ln -f
since
these commands can also unlink a file and once
unlinked in
this matter you can't scrub it. And also fix up the
behavior
for -P when multiple links. And since mv can use
rename(2),
you will have to also dirty up the kernel interface
somehow.
Not to mention even editing such a sensitive file
can leave
stuff all over the disk that a bad guy can get at.
If you
are truely paranoid (as opposed to paranoid only
when on
meds) you know how bad that is!
If you are that concious about scrubbing why not add
scrubbing as a mount option (suggested option: -o
paranoid)
then at least it will be handled consistently.
What's the world come to when even the paranoid are
such
amateurs.
-- bakul
Based on all the potential situations where a -P
option may possibly be implemented, is it worthwhile
considering creating a command that just scrubs a
file, and does nothing else. This would seem to fit
the Unix paradigm of single command to do a single
thing, and may be preferable to attempting to embed
this function in every command that may "possibly"
remove a file.
Just my 2c
Tim
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