Q: Disabling Versions
I create and view confidential medical files as PDFs in Preview, and save the records to an encrypted disk image. In Lion, I believe some Versions of the PDF files are saved to an unencrypted location on my hard disk. This creates a possible privacy breach if my computer is stolen and someone figures out how to access the hidden versions. Before Lion, this wasn't a problem.
While I can access and delete old versions of a given document, it is difficult and cumbersome to do this for every document I open in preview because I open perhaps a hundred such documents every day. (To do this, click to the right of the document name in its window to reveal the disclosure triangle. Examine the old versions. Option click to the right of the name of an old version to delete all old versions.)
So I'd like to disable Versions, but in Lion there is no option to do so. So I'm left with the idea of secure-deleting the folder containing all Versions at the end of each work day.
Document revisions (I'm guessing this means Versions) are stored in an invisible folder called .DocumentRevisions-V100 at the root volume of the hard drive. Permissions for this invisible folder are:
system: No Access
wheel: No Access
everyone: No Access
Obviously you're not supposed to mess with that folder and can only gain some kind of access as root or an admin user.
There are 5 folders in that invisible folder:
/.DocumentRevisions-V100/.cs/ (This is an invisible folder.)
/.DocumentRevisions-V100/ChunkTemp/
/.DocumentRevisions-V100/PerUID/
/.DocumentRevisions-V100/db-V1/
/.DocumentRevisions-V100/staging/
I have the hardest time getting permissions to look inside of those folders (I'm not logged in as root). Sometimes I could change permissions, sometimes I couldn't, and sometimes permissions would revert back to their original values for no apparent reason.
I was able to access a couple of database files within .cs and their contents were gibberish.
My questions:
- So I'm wondering if the Versions data in /.DocumentRevisions-V100/ actually contains readable information or if (hopefully) my concerns are not valid. Certainly it's difficult to access the information in that folder.
- I'm also wondering if it would create any problems if I were to delete the /.DocumentRevisions-V100/ folder everyday.
Any ideas? Any superusers out there who can peek inside these hidden folders?
Any help is welcome.
Message was edited by: Anthony M Kassir MD
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
Posted on Jun 27, 2012 10:12 PM


