Should We Abolish User Access to rm? (2011)

Re:Should We Abolish User Access to rm? (2011) by ChuckMcM on Tuesday July 30, 2013 @05:33PM (#6130203)

'safe rm' or a version of rm which doesn't actually delete stuff is pretty easy. The tough bit it lets say the user creates loveletter.txt, edits it, gets pissed off, rm's it. Now they create it again, edit it again, and remove it.

The simplest implementation fell out of NetApp snapshots, but the next best thing was converting rm to essentially run a directory repostitory (at the time sccs but more modern ones would no doubt use git or something) and each 'rm' was a commit, push followed by removal of the file.

Running it on a live system (in the 90's) it slowed the build way down (removing old object files in 'make clean') but it gave us a way to recreate any state from scratch :-).

In BOFH mode you say "Gee that sucks, next time don't delete files you want to keep."

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Re:Should We Abolish User Access to rm? (2011) by snowwrestler on Tuesday July 30, 2013 @08:26PM (#6131068)

If they create a new version of a deleted file, why wouldn't that just be treated as an entirely new file? If the rm trashcan altered the filename (like, say, appending the time stamp of deletion) upon "deletion", that would avoid name collisions. Or just do like OS X and append -0, -1, etc.

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