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Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2006 18:10:41 -0800 (PST)
From: Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com>
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To: Joerg Pernfuss <elessar@bsdforen.de>
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Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: [patch] rm can have undesired side-effects
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:...
:BSD behaviour:
:- OpenBSD handles hardlinks since 3.3:
:     -P      Overwrite regular files before deleting them.  Files
:	     are overwritten three times, first with the byte pattern
:	     0xff, then 0x00, and then 0xff again, before they are
:	     deleted.  Files with multiple links will not be overwritten.
:- NetBSD uses 0xff, 0x00 and then random data. Ignores link count
:- DragonFlyBSD has the same behaviour as FreeBSD
:
:...
:Although I am a big defender of "the user should know what he does",
:the "right thing to do"[TM] would probably be to sync the behaviour
:of FreeBSD's rm(1) to OpenBSD and lobby NetBSD and DragonFlyBSD to do
:the same :)
:
:	Joerg

    I agree.  I will make this change in DragonFly right now, in fact.
    The -P option really needs to be consistent across environments
    and my take on the original design was so users could alias rm to
    rm -P in their .cshrc files.  Clearly it cannot destroy the contents
    of the file in the presence of hard links when used in that context.

					-Matt