|
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
|
Re: [PLUG] secure file deletion with journaling filesystems
|
Gregson Helledy wrote:
>
> I like to have a way to securely delete files on computers I use. On my
> Windows 98 machine at work,
> I have Eraser (http://www.iki.fi/st/eraser). Linux (well, SuSE and
> Libranet) come with shred.
> However, a quick look at shred's man page warns that it's not useful on
> journaling filesystems. This
> would include reiser, ext3, xfs, I guess all of them except ext2.
> I'm pretty ignorant about filesystems; is it logically impossible to have
> secure deletion with a
> journaling filesystem, or is shred just not the tool for the job?
That's an interesting question. At least for reiser, I'd expect
something like shred to be effective as long as the changes get written
to disk before the system goes down. That's because, while reiser does
journalling, it only journals metadata (directory/file system structure)
info.
If you run a data overwrite tool on reiser, and leave enough time for
the changes to commit to disk, I'd expect them to be completely gone.
The same is probably not true for other styles of journalling
filesystems. I'm less familiar with them.
--
Kevin Brosius
_________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion -- http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug
|
|