Alive and well

[foxgrrl]

Had dinner with (in random order) aprivatefox, tracerj, dymaxion, krdbuni, adularia, and mufi in Seattle. Made it through customs into Canada without incident - it was far more comfortable that entering the US. Currently in downtown Vancouver for CanSec. Went to some talks yesterday on VMWare hacking, and GNU toolchain security features. Had lunch at a vegan restaurant with ioerror, Dino Dai Zovi, and someone else named Window I think? Got caught up on my sleep deprivation.

Comments

[proudlyfallen.livejournal.com]

I don't often comment on your journal, but VMWare caught my eye, and I had a quick question you might be able to answer for me. I had a teacher last semester claim that because virtual machines are installed on "virtual" hard drives, once they are deleted there is no way to get back that data. This led into a lively (and theoretical, of course) discussion on why virtual machines should be used for.... *ahem* shall we say questionable? activites. But... it just seems wrong. The data's still written to a physical hard drive, correct? So it's still there, you just can't get to it. Just like reformatting a drive. Or am I totally off base with this?

(I would have argued it with the teacher, but she's a ditz. The only woman in the entire computer department, and not only is she a godawful teacher, but she barely knows the subject.)

[hollow-hope.livejournal.com]

Your teacher is a bit mistaken. Said virtual hard drive still lives on a real hard drive, and you can certainly get back that data if you're willing to work at it, you just have a filesystem buried in yet another format (the virtual disk format used by whatever virtualization system you're using).

Another way to think about it is if you tarballed up the files. A tar file is technically a VIRTUAL TAPE (tar was originally meant to create a rudimentary filesystem for linear (i.e., tape) storage -- the tar to a file bit was only a secondary feature. Since way fewer people use tapes nowadays, it's now the primary use, but if you have a tape drive for backup or whatever you can still tar to it.). Deleting that .tar virtual tape does not in any way preclude you from recovering the file and thus the files stored within it.

[proudlyfallen.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I thought it was something like that. That makes a lot more sense than what she was saying.