Today I deleted a 50gb file stored on an ext3 filesystem using the rm command. It took rm almost 40 minutes of intense I/Os to release all the blocks. From what I see from other sources, that's the time it takes to release all the blocks used by the file. What would have happened if someone killed the rm process in the middle. Could this have caused a filesystem corruption, with some blocks that couldn't be reclaimed as free space anymore?
Effect of killing a long running rm command
linux;rm