This is srm, a secure replacement for rm(1). Unlike the standard rm,
it overwrites the data in the target files before unlinking them. This
prevents command-line recovery of the data by examining the raw block
device. It may also help frustrate physical examination of the disk,
although it's unlikely that it completely protects against this type of
recovery.
Srm uses algorithms found in "Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic
and Solid-State Memory" by Peter Gutmann and THC Secure Delete (the
overwrite, truncate, rename, unlink sequence).
Srm was originally released under the GPL. Versions 1.1 and later are
released under the MIT/X11 license, which is much less restrictive. For
your convenience, some commonly needed modules are distributed in the
lib/ directory. These may be under different licenses.
All users, but especially Linux users, should be aware that srm will
only work on file systems that overwrite blocks in place. In
particular, it will *NOT* work on reiserfs or the vast majority of
journaled file systems. It should work on ext2, FAT-based file
systems, and the BSD native file system. On ext3 srm will try to disable
journaling of data, see the verbose output if this fails.
Patches and bug reports are all appreciated and should be submitted to
the sourceforge bug tracker, so others can see and discuss those
problems.
original author: Matt Gauthier <elleron@comcast.net>
current maintainer: Dirk Jagdmann <doj@cubic.org>
