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Date:      Mon, 4 Oct 2010 12:03:20 -0400
From:      Ben Kaduk <minimarmot@gmail.com>
To:        Alexander Best <arundel@freebsd.org>
Cc:        svn-src-head@freebsd.org, svn-src-all@freebsd.org, src-committers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: svn commit: r213398 - head/bin/rm
Message-ID:  <AANLkTikoejaB0apmHbLZXBaTDNutKZYnb_oF5=ezmM4h@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20101004114248.GA16641@freebsd.org>
References:  <201010040617.o946HkOO002409@svn.freebsd.org> <20101004092559.GB7322@garage.freebsd.pl> <20101004095845.GA99361@freebsd.org> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1010041435200.95088@woozle.rinet.ru> <20101004104257.GH7322@garage.freebsd.pl> <20101004114248.GA16641@freebsd.org>

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On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 7:42 AM, Alexander Best <arundel@freebsd.org> wrote:
> On Mon Oct =A04 10, Pawel Jakub Dawidek wrote:
>> On Mon, Oct 04, 2010 at 02:35:54PM +0400, Dmitry Morozovsky wrote:
>> > On Mon, 4 Oct 2010, Alexander Best wrote:
>> > AB> =A0 =A0 =A0"The -P option assumes that the underlying file system =
is a fixed-block
>> > AB> =A0 =A0 =A0file system. =A0UFS is a fixed-block file system, LFS i=
s not. =A0In addition,
>> > AB> =A0 =A0 =A0only regular files are overwritten, other types of file=
s are not."
>> >
>> > Maybe s/LFS/ZFS/ then, as LFS is no more relevant for FreeBSD users wh=
ile ZFS
>> > now is?
>>
>> That's what I thought too.
>
> good point. ZFS should really be added to the list and LFS should go away=
. are
> there any other relevant filesystems without a fixed-block size that need=
 to be
> mentioned? what about afs? or tmpfs?

I'm not fully up-to-speed on the AFS fileserver backend, but it is
certainly the case that AFS cannot guarantee that rm -P will actually
overwrite the data on-disk.  There are probably several mechanisms by
which this could happen, the easiest to see of which would be if a
filesystem like ZFS was used as the backing store for the fileserver
partitions.

>
> also: is this really something belonging into a BUGS section? personally =
i
> think the BUGS section in rm(1) should be renamed to CAVEATS.

BUGS is easier to find than CAVEATS, though I guess rm(1) is short
enough that we can expect people to read the whole thing.

-Ben Kaduk



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