Re: FW: Trash and hidden files

[Warren Young <tangent cyberport com>]

Kevin Pearcey wrote:
> 
> Warren Young wrote:
> 
> > One other concern: the trash folder should be in the root of each
> > filesystem, not in that filesystem's /tmp directory.  Many Unixes out
> > there routinely clean out /tmp on a reboot, sometimes deleting
> > everything, and sometimes just files older than 5 days or so.
> 
> I think at this point you should remember that trash should be user
> specific.
> When the next person uses this machine they probably should not get
> access
> to all my personal files I deleted in the last session - And I do hope
> you wont force the trash to be emptied at the end of each session.

My idea doesn't cause any problems with that: at worst, other users can
see the names of the files that are now trashed.  They can't access
them, however, unless they had access to the original file: remember, my
trash directory has 1777 permissions: new files keep the same
permissions and owner as they originally had.

But there's room for modification here: maybe each user gets a private
directory underneath the trash folder.  In fact, I think I like that
even better, especially if it's optional.  On multiuser systems, it's a
good security feature.  On single user systems, or systems where the
users all trust each other, the feature can be turned off.

Or, maybe the trash folder maintains a duplicate of the main filesystem:
if I delete /home/tangent/docs/foobie.txt, it might be stored as
/.gnome-trash/home/tangent/docs/foobie.txt, with all the original
permissions along the path.  That's more work, but just as secure as the
original file was.

By "duplicate of the main filesystem", I mean duplicate directories
created on demand, not a complete directory tree synchronization.  This
bit of functionality can go in the SUID subtool: you tell it you're
about to delete a given file, and it goes into the trash folder to see
if an appropriate subtree exists.  If it doesn't it creates it before
returning control to the main trashcan app.
-- 
= Warren -- ICBM Address: 36.8274040 N, 108.0204086 W, alt. 1714m