rm

• The system call that underlies rm is called unlink

• (Now you know why.)

        int result = unlink("blookus");

• The kernel looks up the directory and the inode

• It clobbers the directory entry

• Big question:

• Does it reclaim the disk blocks in which the data is stored?

• (And does it put the inode back on the free-inode list?)

• If there's another link to blookus, it better not scrub the data and the inode!

• But how can it know without searching the whole filesystem?

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Copyright © 2007 M. J. Dominus