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Introduction
.LP
This paper addresses the need for a mechanism to
recover accidentally deleted files.  We consider various procedures for
saving (\*Qentombing\*U) the these files
and the relative merits of each.
.LP
Many of our users occasionally have reason to require the
restoration of some file, or group of files, which has been
accidentally deleted.  Currently, each user must create his own file
backup procedure which may not be efficient, effective, or secure, and
which may cause some inconvenience by consuming a large portion of the
user's allotted disk space, or they must burden the Computing Center
staff with requests to retrieve files from backup tape, a procedure
which may involve the loss of many hours' work and which may not result
in the recovery of the file.
.LP
While we recognize that the most comprehensive method of solving this
problem is to do so at the kernel level, we feel that practical
considerations (including portability) make other solutions more
attractive.  Our system of file entombing can be added to any program
without source code changes by recompiling with our entombing library.
This causes our subroutines to be substituted for system calls which
commonly destroy files.