(How) does deleting open files on Linux and a FAT file system work?
- by lxgr
It's clear to me how deleting open files works on filesystems that use inodes - unlink() just decreases the link count to zero, and when the last file handle to the file is closed, the inode will be removed.
But how does it work when using a file system that doesn't use inodes, like FAT32, with Linux?
Some experiments suggest that deleting open files is still possible (unlike on Windows, where the unlink call wouldn't succeed), but what happens when the file system is uncleanly unmounted?
How does Linux mark the files as unlinked, when the file system itself doesn't support such an operation? Is the directory entry just deleted, but retained in memory (that would guarantee deletion after unmounting in any case, but would leave the file system in an inconsistent state), or will the deletion only be marked in memory, and written at the time the last file handle is closed, avoiding possible corruption, but restoring the deleted files after an unclean unmount?
