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
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 re-
move 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 de-
tails.
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/>
SEE ALSO
Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/shred>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) shred invocation'
Packaged by Debian (9.7-3)
Copyright © 2025 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/li-
censes/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
GNU coreutils 9.7 June 2025 SHRED(1)
Generated by dwww version 1.16 on Tue Dec 16 04:05:56 CET 2025.