From owner-freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Apr 27 19:18:34 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CCC5516A4CE for ; Wed, 27 Apr 2005 19:18:34 +0000 (GMT) Received: from parse.com (ottawa-hs-206-191-28-202.s-ip.magma.ca [206.191.28.202]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EFCB243D46 for ; Wed, 27 Apr 2005 19:18:33 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from root@parse.com) Received: (from root@localhost) by parse.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) id PAA05842 for freebsd-fs@freebsd.org; Wed, 27 Apr 2005 15:18:33 -0400 Message-Id: <200504271918.PAA05842@parse.com> To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 15:18:33 -0400 (EDT) From: "Robert Krten" X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL1] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Background block scrubbing X-BeenThere: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Filesystems List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 19:18:34 -0000 I don't know where to ask but here :-) Is there a utility that does background unused block scrubbing? What I'm thinking of is something that looks for unused blocks on the disk, and then writes zeros, then random, then more random, etc, to them for security applications. It would need to have some cooperation from the filesystem so that it could lock down a block (or ten, or some number) at a time that it could then go and "scrub" during idle periods... Since it would only allocate a few blocks at a time, it wouldn't need to have a mechanism to release them (IMHO). If there's nothing like it, can anyone give hints on where I should look in the source tree for an appropriate place to put such a thing? Thanks in advance! Cheers, -RK -- Robert Krten, PARSE Software Devices +1 613 599 8316. Looking for Digital Equipment Corp. PDP-1 through PDP-15 minicomputers!