SYNOPSIS

       fastrm [-de] [-u|-uN] [-s|-sM] [-c|-cI] base-directory

DESCRIPTION

       fastrm reads a list of either file names or storage API tokens, one per
       line, from its standard input and removes them.  Storage API tokens are
       removed via the SMcancel() interface.  fastrm does not delete files
       safely or with an eye to security, but rather cuts every corner it can
       to delete files as fast as it can.  It should therefore never be run on
       publically writable directories, or in any other environment where a
       hostile party may control the directory structure in which it is work-
       ing.

       If a file name is not an absolute path name, it is considered to be
       relative to base-directory as given on the command line.  The base-
       directory parameter must be a simple absolute pathname (it must not
       contain multiple consecutive slashes or references to the special
       directories "." or "..").

       fastrm is designed to be faster than the typical "| xargs rm" pipeline
       when given a sorted list of file names as input.  For example, fastrm
       will usually chdir(2) into a directory before removing files from it,
       meaning that if its input is sorted, most names passed to unlink(2)
       will be simple names.  This can substantially reduce the operating sys-
       tem overhead from directory lookups.

       fastrm assumes that its input is valid and that it is safe to call
       unlink(2) on every file name it is given.  As a safety measure, how-
       ever, fastrm when running as root will check with stat(2) that a file
       name doesn't specify a directory before removing it.  (In some operat-
       ing systems, root is allowed to unlink directories, even directories
       which aren't empty, which can cause file system corruption.)

       The input to fastrm should always be sorted -- or even better be in the
       order file names are output by find(1) -- if speed is an issue and the
       input isn't solely storage API tokens.  (It deals fine with unsorted
       input, but is unlikely to be any faster in that case than a simple
       "xargs rm" command.)  Sorting may even slightly speed up the removal of
       storage API tokens due to caching effects, since sorting will tend to
       keep all of the tokens from a particular storage method together.

       Various additional optimizations for removing files can be turned on
       and/or tuned with options (see below).  Which options will be most
       effective depends heavily on the underlying structure of the file sys-
       tem, the way in which directories are stored and searched, and similar,
       often underdocumented, operating system implementation details.  The
       more sophisticated the underlying operating system and file system, the
       more likely that it will already perform the equivalent of these opti-
       mizations internally.

OPTIONS

       -d  Don't remove any files.  Instead, print a list of the files that
           it will use either the absolute path names or a path name relative
           to the current directory (whichever is likely more efficient).  The
           I parameter is optional; if just -c is given, -c1 is assumed, which
           will cause fastrm to always chdir before calling unlink(2).  The
           default is -c3.  Use -c0 to prevent fastrm from ever using
           chdir(2).

       -sM When -s is given and the number of files to remove in a directory
           is greater than M, rather than remove files in the order given,
           fastrm will open the directory and read it, unlinking files in the
           order that they appear in the directory.  On systems with a per-
           process directory cache or that use a linear search to find files
           in a directory, this should make directory lookups faster.  The M
           parameter is optional; if just -s is given, -s5 is assumed.

           When this option is in effect, fastrm won't attempt to remove files
           that it doesn't see in the directory, possibly significantly speed-
           ing it up if most of the files to be removed have already been
           deleted.  However, using this option requires fastrm to do more
           internal work and it also assumes that the order of directory list-
           ings is stable in the presence of calls to unlink(2) between calls
           to readdir(3).  This may be a dangerous assumption with some
           sophisticated file systems (and in general this option is only use-
           ful with file systems that use unindexed linear searches to find
           files in directories or when most of the files to be removed have
           already been deleted).

           This optimization is off by default.

       -uN Specifying this option promises that there are no symbolic links in
           the directory tree from which files are being removed.  This allows
           fastrm to make an additional optimization to its calls to chdir(2),
           constructing a relative path using "../.." and the like to pass to
           chdir(2) rather than always using absolute paths.  Since this
           reduces the number of directory lookups needed with deeply nested
           directory structures (such as that typically created by traditional
           news spool storage), it can be a significant optimization, but it
           breaks horribly in the presence of symbolic links to directories.

           When -u is given, fastrm will use at most N levels of ".."  seg-
           ments to construct paths.  N is optional; if just -u is given, -u1
           is assumed.

           This optimization is off by default.

       fastrm also accepts -a and -r options, which do nothing at all except
       allow you to say "fastrm -usa", "fastrm -ussr", or "fastrm -user".
       These happen to often be convenient sets of options to use.

EXIT STATUS

       fastrm exits with a status of zero if there were no problems, and an
       exit status of 1 if something went wrong.  Attempting to remove a file
       deeply nested directory structure, you may want to use a set of flags
       like:

           fastrm -e -u3 ~news/spool/articles < expire.list

       to strongly prefer relative paths but not to use readdir(2) to order
       the calls to unlink(2).

       You may want to edit expirerm(8) to change the flags passed to fastrm.

WARNINGS

       fastrm cuts corners and does not worry about security, so it does not
       use chdir(2) safely and could be tricked into removing files other than
       those that were intended if run on a specially constructed file tree or
       a file tree that is being modified while it is running.  It should
       therefore never be used with world-writable directories or any other
       directory that might be controlled or modified by an attacker.

NOTES

       fastrm defers opening the storage subsystem or attempting to parse any
       INN configuration files until it encounters a token in the list of
       files to remove.  It's therefore possible to use fastrm outside of INN
       as a general fast file removal program.

HISTORY

       fastrm was originally written by kre@munnari.oz.au.  This manual page
       rewritten in POD by Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> for InterNetNews.

       $Id: fastrm.1 7429 2005-12-11 20:42:43Z eagle $

SEE ALSO

       expirerm(8)



INN 2.4.3                         2005-10-08                         FASTRM(1)