Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2010 09:55:38 +0200 From: Gary Jennejohn <gljennjohn@googlemail.com> To: Bruce Evans <brde@optusnet.com.au> Cc: Doug Barton <dougb@FreeBSD.org>, d@delphij.net, svn-src-all@FreeBSD.org, src-committers@FreeBSD.org, svn-src-head@FreeBSD.org, Alexander Best <arundel@FreeBSD.org>, Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@FreeBSD.org> Subject: Re: svn commit: r214431 - head/bin/rm Message-ID: <20101028095538.24147119@ernst.jennejohn.org> In-Reply-To: <20101028152418.A916@besplex.bde.org> References: <201010271848.o9RImNSR019344@svn.freebsd.org> <20101027212601.GA78062@freebsd.org> <4CC899C3.7040107@FreeBSD.org> <20101027214822.GA82697@freebsd.org> <4CC8A89D.5070909@delphij.net> <20101028152418.A916@besplex.bde.org>
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On Thu, 28 Oct 2010 16:22:05 +1100 (EST) Bruce Evans <brde@optusnet.com.au> wrote: > On Wed, 27 Oct 2010, Xin LI wrote: > > > I think what really defeats -P is the fact that the file system or > > underlying data storage would not overwrite data on a file at sync(). > > COW is of course one of the case, journaling MAY defeat -P but is not > > guaranteed. FS with variable block size - I believe this really depends > > on the implementation. > > > > If I understood the code correctly, UFS, UFS+SU, UFS+SUJ, msdosfs and > > ext2fs supports rm -P as long as they are not being put on gjournal'ed > > disk, ZFS zvol, etc., and no snapshot is being used. > > And that the underlying data storage us dumb. Any flash drive now > tries to minimise writes. It wouldn't take much buffering to defeat > the 0xff, 0,0xff pattern. Wear leveling should result in different > physical blocks being written each time if the writes get to the > lowest level of storage. > > And that block reallocation (done by ffs1 and ffs2) doesn't choose > different blocks. > > > It seems to be hard for me to conclude all cases in short, plain English > > but I'm all for improvements to the manual page to describe that in an > > elegant and precise manner. > > > > Maybe something like: > > > > =============== > > BUGS > > > > The -P option assumes that the underlying storage overwrites file block > > when data is written on existing offset. Several factors including the > > file system and its backing store could defeat the assumption, this > > includes, but is not limited to file systems that uses Copy-On-Write > > strategy (e.g. ZFS or UFS when snapshot is being used), or backing > > datastore that does journaling, etc. In addition, only regular files > > are overwritten, other types of files are not. > > =============== > > Summary: it is very hard to tell whether -P works, even when you think > you know what all the subsystems are doing. > All this discussion leads me to the conclusion that we should just remove the -P functionality and add a remark to the man page that that was done because it isn't guaranteed to work on all file systems. Why give users a false sense of security? If they're concerned about data security then they should use geli or something similar. -- Gary Jennejohn
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