Re: Ext2 zeros inode in directory entry when deleting files.

[Alexander Viro]

On Sat, 16 Mar 2002, Paul Allen wrote:

> While helping a friend recover from a catastrophic "rm -rf" accident,
> I discovered that deleted files have the inode number in their old
> directory entries zeroed.  This makes it impossible to match file
> names with recovered files.  I've verified this behavior on Mandrake
> 8.1 with Mandrake's stock 2.4.8 kernel.  In my kernel sources and
> in the stock 2.4.8 sources, the function ext2_delete_entry() in
> fs/ext2/dir.c has this line:
> 
> 	dir->inode = 0;
> 
> I've done some searching with Google for discussion of this feature.

Try "A Fast Filesystem for UNIX(tm)", by McKusick et.al.