shred(1)

🦋 NAME 🦋

hey bestie, meet shred — your new main character straight out of the General Commands Manual (yes, that's the shred(1) energy 💅). Her whole thing? She overwrites the specified FILE(s) repeatedly, so it gets harder for even very expensive hardware probing to recover the data. not just "oops I deleted it" — we're talking actual obliteration. no cap. 🔥

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

here's how you summon her:

shred [-f|--force] [-n|--iterations] [-s|--size] [-u ] [--remove]
      [-v|--verbose] [-x|--exact] [-z|--zero] [--random-source] [-h|--help]
      [-V|--version] [file]

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

okay so literally, the whole job description is: overwrite the specified FILE(s) repeatedly, in order to make it harder for even very expensive hardware probing to recover the data. that's it. that's the mission. periodt. 💅

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -f, --force — if the permissions are being stubborn and blocking writes, this changes them so writing is actually possible. she will not be stopped. 💪
• -n, --iterations <NUMBER> — overwrite N times instead of the default. default is 3. so like, -n 7 if you're feeling extra paranoid, bestie 🫶
• -s, --size <N> — shred this many bytes only. suffixes like K, M, G are accepted, so you can be like "just this much" ✂️
• -u — deallocate and remove the file after overwriting. gone gone. 🫥
• --remove[=<HOW>] — like -u but it gives you control over HOW to delete. see below for the tea 👀
  • possible values:
    • unlink
    • wipe
    • wipesync
• -v, --verbose — show progress. so you can sit there and watch her cook 👑
• -x, --exact — do not round file sizes up to the next full block. this is the default for non-regular files, fyi ✨
• -z, --zero — add a final overwrite with zeros to hide the shredding. the little finishing touch 🎀
• --random-source — take random bytes from FILE 🎲
• -h, --help — print help 📖
• -V, --version — print version 🏷️
• [file] — the file(s) in question, obviously 💁

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🌈 EXTRA 🌈

Delete the FILE(s) if --remove (-u) is specified. The default is not to remove the files, because it's super common to operate on device files like /dev/hda, and those files usually should not be removed. so like, chill, she's not gonna yeet your devices unless you tell her to. 🙈

⚠️ CAUTION: note that shred relies on a very important assumption: that the file system overwrites data in place. This is the traditional way to do things, but many modern file system designs do not satisfy this assumption. 😭

The following are examples of file systems on which shred is not effective, or is not guaranteed to be effective in all file system modes:

• log-structured or journal file systems, such as those supplied with AIX and Solaris (and JFS, ReiserFS, XFS, Ext3, etc.)
• file systems that write redundant data and carry on even if some writes fail, such as RAID-based file systems
• file systems that make snapshots, such as Network Appliance's NFS server
• file systems that cache in temporary locations, such as NFS version 3 clients
• compressed file systems

In the case of ext3 file systems, the above disclaimer applies (and shred is thus of limited effectiveness) only in data=journal mode, which journals file data in addition to just metadata. In both the data=ordered (default) and data=writeback modes, shred works as usual. Ext3 journal modes can be changed by adding the data=something option to the mount options for a particular file system in the /etc/fstab file, as documented in the mount man page (man mount). 🛠️

In addition, file system backups and remote mirrors may contain copies of the file that cannot be removed, and that will allow a shredded file to be recovered later. yeah. that's the scary part. 😬

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⭐ VERSION ⭐

v(uutils coreutils) 0.7.0

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okay that's the whole page, bestie 🫶 this came from shred (uutils coreutils) 0.7.0, page shred(1) — and ngl the footer didn't bring a date with it, so we're rolling with the version and the section number and calling it a day. stay safe out there, and remember: shred responsibly. 💖✨