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Diffstat (limited to 'system/zerofree/zerofree.8')
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diff --git a/system/zerofree/zerofree.8 b/system/zerofree/zerofree.8 deleted file mode 100644 index fb6f277e7bd50..0000000000000 --- a/system/zerofree/zerofree.8 +++ /dev/null @@ -1,92 +0,0 @@ -.TH "ZEROFREE" "8" -.SH "NAME" -zerofree \(em zero free blocks from ext2, ext3 and ext4 file-systems -.SH "SYNOPSIS" -.PP -\fBzerofree\fR [\fB-n\fP] [\fB-v\fP] [\fB-f fillval\fP] \fIfilesystem\fR -.SH "DESCRIPTION" -.PP -\fBzerofree\fR finds the unallocated, -blocks with non-zero value content in an ext2, ext3 or ext4 -\fIfilesystem\fR (e.g. /dev/hda1) and -fills them with zeroes (or another octet of your choice). - - -.PP -Filling unused areas with zeroes is useful if the device on -which this file-system resides is a disk image. In this case, -depending on the type of disk image, a secondary utility may be -able to reduce the size of the disk image after zerofree has -been run. - -.PP -Filling unused areas may also be useful with solid-state -drives (SSDs). On some SSDs, filling blocks with ones (0xFF) -is reported to trigger Flash block erasure by the firmware, -possibly giving a write performance increase. - -.PP -The usual way to achieve the same result (zeroing the -unallocated blocks) is to run \fBdd\fR (1) to -create a file full of zeroes that takes up the entire free -space on the drive, and then delete this file. This has many -disadvantages, which zerofree alleviates: -.IP " \(bu" 6 -it is slow; -.IP " \(bu" 6 -it makes the disk image (temporarily) grow to its maximal -extent; -.IP " \(bu" 6 -it (temporarily) uses all free space on the disk, so other -concurrent write actions may fail. - -.PP -\fIfilesystem\fR has to be unmounted or -mounted read-only for \fBzerofree\fR to work. It -will exit with an error message if the -\fIfilesystem\fR is mounted writable. To -remount the root file-system readonly, you can first switch to -single user runlevel (\fBtelinit 1\fR) then use -\fBmount \-o remount,ro -\fIfilesystem\fR\fR. - -.PP -\fBzerofree\fR has been written to be run -from GNU/Linux systems installed as guest OSes inside a virtual -machine. In this case, it is typically run from within the guest -system, and a utility is then run from the host system to shrink -disk image (\fBVBoxManage modifyhd \-\-compact\fR, -provided with virtualbox, is able to do that for some disk image -formats). - -.PP -It may however be useful in other situations: for instance -it can be used to make it more difficult to retrieve deleted -data. Beware that securely deleting sensitive data is not in -general an easy task and usually requires writing several times -on the deleted blocks. - -.SH "OPTIONS" -.IP "\fB-n\fP " 10 -Perform a dry run (do not modify the file-system); -.IP "\fB-v\fP " 10 -Be verbose; -.IP "\fB-f value\fP " 10 -Specify the octet value to fill empty blocks with (defaults to -0). Argument must be within the range 0 to 255. -.SH "SEE ALSO" -.PP -dd (1). -.SH "AUTHOR" -.PP -This manual page was written by Thibaut Paumard <paumard@users.sourceforge.net> for -the \fBDebian\fP system (but may be used by others). Permission is -granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under -the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 2 or any -later version published by the Free Software Foundation. - -.PP -On Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public -License can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2. - -.\" created by instant / docbook-to-man, Mon 31 Mar 2014, 15:41 |