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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | AUTHOR | REPORTING BUGS | COPYRIGHT | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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SHRED(1) User Commands SHRED(1)
shred - overwrite a file to hide its contents, and optionally
delete it
shred [OPTION]... FILE...
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.
]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#shred-f\-f, --force]8;;\
change permissions to allow writing if necessary
]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#shred-n\-n, --iterations=N]8;;\
overwrite N times instead of the default (3)
]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#shred--random-source\--random-source=FILE]8;;\
get random bytes from FILE
]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#shred-s\-s, --size=N]8;;\
shred this many bytes (suffixes like K, M, G accepted)
]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#shred-u\-u]8;;\ deallocate and remove file after overwriting
]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#shred--remove\--remove[=HOW]]8;;\
like -u but give control on HOW to delete; See below
]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#shred-v\-v, --verbose]8;;\
show details of data and metadata operations performed
]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#shred-x\-x, --exact]8;;\
do not round file sizes up to the next full block; this is
the default for non-regular files
]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#shred-z\-z, --zero]8;;\
add a final overwrite with zeros to hide shredding
]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/shred#shred--help\--help]8;;\ display this help and exit
]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/shred#shred--version\--version]8;;\
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.
Written by Colin Plumb.
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 © 2026 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.
Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/shred>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) shred invocation'
This page is part of the coreutils (basic file, shell and text
manipulation utilities) project. Information about the project
can be found at ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/⟩. If you
have a bug report for this manual page, see
⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/⟩. This page was obtained
from the tarball coreutils-9.11.tar.xz fetched from
⟨http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/⟩ on 2026-05-24. If you
discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page,
or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the
page, or you have corrections or improvements to the information
in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page),
send a mail to man-pages@man7.org
GNU coreutils 9.11 April 2026 SHRED(1)
Pages that refer to this page: rm(1), logrotate(8)
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HTML rendering created 2026-05-24 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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