Re: Drawbacks of implementing undelete entirely in user space

Todd Graham Lewis (tlewis@mindspring.com)
Sat, 22 Jun 1996 21:39:38 -0400

My experience with .wastebasket under Solaris would lead me to be
disinclined to any solution that does not begin expiration immediately
upon (disk utilization > threshold). Had a very scary experience with
101% util and not knowing that .wastebasket was there. (Solaris had a
bug whereby under certain conditions the responsible application did not
purge the directory, so it just grew and grew...)

I would think that such an automatic expiration process could be handled
in a daemon, rather than in the kernel. Such an fs monitor could also
serve as a dropping-point for such files; a certain portion of disk space
or a separate (encrypted? gzipped? jk 8^) partition could be set aside
for such files, providing a bulkhead against out-of-control "deleted
files". Undelete is always and necessarily a hit-or-miss thing, so a
limit on undeleted files would be acceptable.

$0.02

_____________________________________________________________________
Todd Graham Lewis Core Engineering Mindspring Enterprises
tlewis@mindspring.com (Standard Disclaimers) (800) 719 4664, x2804