File Deletes and Undeletes | Hadoop Tutorial pdf

File Deletes and Undeletes

When a file is deleted by a user or an application, it is not immediately removed from HDFS. Instead, HDFS first renames it to a file in the /trash directory. The file can be restored quickly as long as it remains in /trash. A file remains in /trash for a configurable amount of time. After the expiry of its life in /trash, the NameNode deletes the file from the HDFS namespace.
The deletion of a file causes the blocks associated with the file to be freed. Note that there could be an appreciable time delay between the time a file is deleted by a user and the time of the corresponding increase in free space in HDFS.
A user can Undelete a file after deleting it as long as it remains in the /trash directory. If a user wants to undelete a file that he/she has deleted, he/she can navigate the /trash directory and retrieve the file. The /trash directory contains only the latest copy of the file that was deleted. The /trash directory is just like any other directory with one special feature: HDFS applies specified policies to automatically delete files from this directory.
The current default policy is to delete files from /trash that are more than 6 hours old. In the future, this policy will be configurable through a well defined interface.