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Manual

SHRED

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
AUTHOR
REPORTING BUGS
SEE ALSO

NAME

shred - overwrite a file to hide its contents, and optionally delete it

SYNOPSIS

shred [ OPTION ]... FILE ...

DESCRIPTION

Overwrite the specified FILE(s) repeatedly, in order to make it harder for even very expensive hardware probing to recover the data.

If FILE is -, shred standard output.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.
-f , --force

change permissions to allow writing if necessary

-n , --iterations = N

overwrite N times instead of the default (3)

--random-source = FILE

get random bytes from FILE

-s , --size = N

shred this many bytes (suffixes like K, M, G accepted)

-u

deallocate and remove file after overwriting

--remove [= HOW ]

like -u but give control on HOW to delete; See below

-v , --verbose

show progress

-x , --exact

do not round file sizes up to the next full block; this is the default for non-regular files

-z , --zero

add a final overwrite with zeros to hide shredding

--help

display this help and exit

--version

output version information and exit

Delete FILE(s) if --remove ( -u ) is specified. The default is not to remove the files because it is common to operate on device files like /dev/hda , and those files usually should not be removed. The optional HOW parameter indicates how to remove a directory entry: ’unlink’ => use a standard unlink call. ’wipe’ => also first obfuscate bytes in the name. ’wipesync’ => also sync each obfuscated byte to the device. The default mode is ’wipesync’, but note it can be expensive.

CAUTION: shred assumes the file system and hardware overwrite data in place. Although this is common, many platforms operate otherwise. Also, backups and mirrors may contain unremovable copies that will let a shredded file be recovered later. See the GNU coreutils manual for details.

AUTHOR

Written by Colin Plumb.

REPORTING BUGS

GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>