Thanks for the suggestion. There is already a tool in the GNU fileutils package that does this. It's called shred. The latest test release is here: ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/fetish/fileutils-4.0w.tar.gz "Omer Shenker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: | I would like to suggest offering secure file deletion via an rm option. This | would be implemented by opening the file, determining its length, and | overwriting the full length with random data. The writing could be repeated | an arbitrary number of times. | | By no means would this be a foolproof solution to secure deletion. Assuming | overwriting blocks on the device actually makes it impossible for even | specialized hardware to read the previous contents, there's still no way to | know if the file has been truncated. However, this is typically not a | concern with logfiles. If the documentation makes the limitations | sufficiently clear, this could be a very useful feature for sysadmins and | others. | | I can try implementing this if you'd like, or I can send you the somewhat | nonportable hack I wrote to do this task (it does nothing interesting or | clever). My apologies if this has been suggested and rejected before; I | didn't see it in the TODO file and couldn't find any relevant list archives.
