Re: in place writing

[Michael Meeks <michael ximian com>]

On Fri, 2003-12-05 at 19:44, Grahame Bowland wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 05, 2003 at 01:27:17PM -0600, Jacob Perkins wrote:
> > I've implemented a 'secure' delete operation that overwrites (using
> > gnome-vfs) a file multiple times with random data.

	The real question is: does it fill the file multiple-times with random
data, or a memory-backed cache of that file ;-) my guess is the latter;
of course - perhaps it's vauable to expunge it from your RAM aload
[someone could polish the top off and take an STM to it after-all], but
you'd most likely want synchronous access to the disk to blat the raw
data there several times.

> > Does gnome-vfs provide any guarantees that the writing will actually be in
> > the same place on disk each time?

	Nope; and better - an intelligent filesystem may have already moved the
file around the disk as it changed in size ;-) [ at least, so one might
imagine ].

	Hrm,

		Michael.

-- 
 michael ximian com  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot