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From: jerry@oliveb.UUCP (Jerry Aguirre)
Newsgroups: net.sources.bugs
Subject: Re: What happens during an unlink(2)
Message-ID: <859@oliveb.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 20-May-86 16:02:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: oliveb.859
Posted: Tue May 20 16:02:32 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 23-May-86 06:52:55 EDT
References: <947@kitty.UUCP> <979@kitty.UUCP> <634@ihdev.UUCP> <2759@utcsri.UUCP>
Reply-To: jerry@oliveb.UUCP (Jerry Aguirre)
Organization: Olivetti ATC; Cupertino, Ca
Lines: 13
Keywords: Disk blocks sometimes get zeroed

Regarding the proposal for an option to "rm" or unlink(2) to zero
discarded disk blocks for security reasons.

I hope that "rm" or unlink(2) is going to check st_nlinks before doing
this.  Remember that removing a file will only deallocate the data if
the name being removed is the LAST link to the file.

Before 4.2BSD rename(2) the only way to rename a file was to link(2) a
new name and then unlink(2) the old one.  I would hate to have files
zeroed everytime I did a "mv".

					Jerry Aguirre @ Olivetti ATC
{hplabs|fortune|idi|ihnp4|tolerant|allegra|glacier|olhqma}!oliveb!jerry