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obliterate(8)          DragonFly System Manager's Manual         obliterate(8)


NAME

     obliterate - scrub bits off magnetic media


SYNOPSIS

     obliterate [-fv] file [file...]


DESCRIPTION

     obliterate overwrites the named file[s] with a pattern designed to
     securely remove the data from the surface of most modern disk drives.

     The -f (force) option will obliterate files even if they are marked read-
     only, as long as they are owned by the user, or will allow overwriting of
     a character-special file, such as a raw disk device.  The -v (verbose)
     option causes obliterate to report on the progress in scrubbing and
     removing each file.  Specifying multiple -v options will make the program
     more vebose.  Currently, only two are useful.


BUGS

     obliterate does not control the cache on the disk drive, which may
     interfere with the proper writing of the data to the physical media.
     This program should disable the cache on the device if possible, but that
     is beyond the scope of the current development effort.


SEE ALSO

     rm(1), http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html


AUTHOR

     obliterate and this man page were written by Wes Peters
     <wes@softweyr.com> for the FreeBSD Project.

     The data patterns used to overwrite the file[s] are taken from a paper
     entitled "Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory"
     by Peter Gutman of the Department of Computer Science, University of
     Auckland <pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz>.


HISTORY

     The obliterate command first appeared in FreeBSD 3.3.  It grew the
     ability to overwrite disk devices in FreeBSD 5.3, to scrub a disk clean
     for Rob Weinberg.

FreeBSD                           May 2, 1999                          FreeBSD

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