From: John Christian (potus98@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Dec 22 2005 - 16:24:18 EST
Hi gurus,
How does one really delete the contents of a file? It's my understanding that
rm unlinks the inode, but doesn't actually zero-out the data blocks associated
with the file. How can you really destroy the contents of a file? What if
you're doing a rm -r of hundreds of files?
I found GNU's shred, but the docs state "that shred relies on a very important
assumption: that the filesystem overwrites data in place. This is the
traditional way to do things, but many modern filesystem designs [such as
Solaris' UFS] do not satisfy this assumption." I'm on Solaris 9 with UFS
mirrored by SVM/SDS.
BACKGROUND: I need to transfer ownership of a host to another company. The
"safest" way to transfer the host (IMHO) is to beat the hard drives with a
hammer before throwing them into an incinerator and telling them to buy new
ones. BUT, they will be performing similar work and could save time by starting
with the host built to our specs. SO, I could format > analyze > write, then
rebuild the system from scratch to our specs. BUT, mgmt wants this all done
really fast and has asked "Can't we just delete the files and databases we
don't want them to have?" Due to the nature of the data, I want to be sure the
data is REALLY destroyed.
Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not after my data.
Thanks for any direct solutions or hints on where to find more information!
-John
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