.\" DO NOT MODIFY THIS FILE!  It was generated by help2man 1.49.3.
.TH SHRED "1" "January 2023" "GNU coreutils 9.1" "User Commands"
.SH NAME
shred \- manual page for shred 9.1
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B shred
[\fI\,OPTION\/\fR]... \fI\,FILE\/\fR...
.SH DESCRIPTION
Overwrite the specified FILE(s) repeatedly, in order to make it harder
for even very expensive hardware probing to recover the data.
.PP
If FILE is \-, shred standard output.
.PP
Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.
.TP
\fB\-f\fR, \fB\-\-force\fR
change permissions to allow writing if necessary
.TP
\fB\-n\fR, \fB\-\-iterations\fR=\fI\,N\/\fR
overwrite N times instead of the default (3)
.TP
\fB\-\-random\-source\fR=\fI\,FILE\/\fR
get random bytes from FILE
.TP
\fB\-s\fR, \fB\-\-size\fR=\fI\,N\/\fR
shred this many bytes (suffixes like K, M, G accepted)
.TP
\fB\-u\fR
deallocate and remove file after overwriting
.TP
\fB\-\-remove\fR[=\fI\,HOW\/\fR]
like \fB\-u\fR but give control on HOW to delete;  See below
.TP
\fB\-v\fR, \fB\-\-verbose\fR
show progress
.TP
\fB\-x\fR, \fB\-\-exact\fR
do not round file sizes up to the next full block;
.IP
this is the default for non\-regular files
.TP
\fB\-z\fR, \fB\-\-zero\fR
add a final overwrite with zeros to hide shredding
.TP
\fB\-\-help\fR
display this help and exit
.TP
\fB\-\-version\fR
output version information and exit
.PP
Delete FILE(s) if \fB\-\-remove\fR (\fB\-u\fR) is specified.  The default is not to remove
the files because it is common to operate on device files like \fI\,/dev/hda\/\fP,
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.
.PP
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.
.PP
GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>
Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/shred>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) shred invocation'
.SH AUTHOR
Written by Colin Plumb.
.SH COPYRIGHT
Copyright \(co 2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
.br
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.