Enhanced Trash functionality

[p.carsten at arcor.de]

Andrew Sobala wrote:
> Don't forget the fundamental difference about trash and undelete: stuff
> in the trash is persistent and will exist until the user specifically
> empties the trash. Files deleted from the filesystem could vanish at any
> time.

IMHO exaclty that should not be the case with a real undelete suport implemented in the filesystem. IIRC it is currently that way because an undelete tool can merely look around for unreferenced files on the disk.
I would picture the fs to just reference deleted files as such and provide a trash policy to never purge automatically or optionally after a certain time etc.

Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
> Global undelete is not much desirable. Just sucks resources.

Well don't think many would activate the filesystem's undelete or trash funktion globaly, but rather say for the /home filesystem.

I wouldn't be so sure about the resources though. Disc-space-wise it doesn't matter if you keep a file where they where on the fs or you move them into some kind of trash folder howerver the latter would need additional database backing, if I understood the original idea here correctly.


> What people are interested in is undelete for /home, ie, Personal 
Files.

Ack. And as simple and general as possible I guess.

Deleting a file file in /home with undelete anabled for this mount the filesystem could mark a file as deleted and make it accessible read-only for the user maybe in a .trash .undelete or .deleted subfolder enumerated by date of deletion. Now the user has the possibility to copy it back in or to purge it in order to free space for his quoata/fs.

> Look around for something called Storage, a proposal by 
Seth Nickel.
Yes I heard about it, an intersting alternative for some uses, not that light on resources either I guess. But of course it goes beyond a classic fs ;-)

-Peter