Still no secure rm in pre2.0.4

Marek Michalkiewicz (marekm@i17linuxb.ists.pwr.wroc.pl)
Wed, 15 May 1996 21:36:28 +0200 (MET DST)


Hi,

I just noticed that pre2.0.4 still doesn't support the secure deletion
feature of the ext2 filesystem (which is disabled due to bad interaction
with shared mappings). Are there any plans to put it back in the kernel
before the 2.0 release? The Linus' comments in fs/ext2/truncate.c have
some suggestions how to implement this.

Now that we have the kernel random number generator, it could be used
here too, instead of the simple predictable one. If the random device
is made a config option and it is disabled, we could simply fill the
deleted disk blocks with zeros - if you are paranoid about such things,
you probably have the random device enabled :-).

A program to clear all unused space on a filesystem would be nice...

Regards,

Marek