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SHRED(1) User Commands SHRED(1) 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 de- fault 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 un- link 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 Report bugs to: bug-coreutils@gnu.org GNU coreutils home page: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/> General help using GNU software: <https://www.gnu.org/gethelp/> Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/> COPYRIGHT Copyright (C) 2025 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>. This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. SEE ALSO Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/shred> or available locally via: info '(coreutils) shred invocation' GNU coreutils 9.9 November 2025 SHRED(1)
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