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Manually 'obliterating' some nodes from a repository

From: Jorge Uriarte <jorge.uriarte_at_omelas.net>
Date: 2006-01-18 19:33:03 CET

Hi there,

I've just stumbled into a problem I really never thought I would.
I'm in the need of 'obliterating' some files that pose a privacy concern on some
of my clients. I need to remove every trace of the content of this files; I
don't care if the nodes survive the wiping off, but I need them 'cleared'.

My repo (fsfs) is nowadays +10G (great performance, btw!), and so manually
editing a dump scares me in some way, but I don't think I have any other chance,
have I?

The offending files must be spread along the repo, because they've been in there
for 9 months, and we've branched several times since then, so I don't trust me
enought to use a list of svndumpfilters (btw, some months ago I was unabled to
filter a big repo, because of memory problems).

My process so far has been:

1- 'svnadmin dump' of the repo -> I've got a +10G file.
2- split -b100m -a3 -d -> I've got files I can afford to 'edit'.
3- grep "^Node-path:.*myprivatefile$" x??? -> I got where my file's entries are.
4- Manually edit the fragments, removing the 'Node-path:' entries, including the
content bytes.
5- cat the fragments together again.
6- Load the new dmp file in a newly created repo.

I'm currently in the step 5, and it will take some hours I guess.

My doubts... is it enough with the grep I'm doing in the third step?
I've only got two occurrences, and I think there should have been more.
Is this 'Node-path:' only the ancestor of other living instances of my file in
other branches? If so... what should I edit to 'obliterate' all of them?

And... btw... I know obliterate is not implemented but... is my approach totally
wrong? should I be trying something more useful?

Thanks in advance!

_
Jorge

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Received on Wed Jan 18 22:28:58 2006

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