read() on a deleted file
Fasihullah Askiri
fasihullah.askiri at gmail.com
Thu Jan 3 10:30:22 UTC 2008
Hi all
I have a doubt regarding the behaviour of read() on an ext3
filesystem. To elucidate my doubts, I wrote a small program opens a
file and reads one byte at a time and sleeps for a while. I deleted
the file while the read was still in progress and I noticed that the
read still succeeds. How does this work? Does the kernel not free the
inode when the file is deleted but there is a pending read? To check
this, instead of deleting, I tried shred-ding the file, the read still
gets the correct data.
My questions:
- Where does the kernel get the data from?
- Is this a documented feature which I can use?
- Does shred write the file inode with junk?
Thanks for your patience
--
Keep Running.... And Relish the run...
+Fasih
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