now, how can I erase that file X again with sfill or srm from HD? where is the file X? is it posible erase it again?

thanks

“it” being the sfill program or the data on the disk?

if “it” is the program, have you tried CNTRL-C?

if “it” is the data, read some of the above posts about ghost copies, and sector remapping etc. and then DBAN the disk.

I tried SFILL. What a nightmare! It consumed 100% of the CPU on my old laptop for hours and did its best to melt my CPU. I was afraid to CTRL-C out of it while it worked on my partition so I started up a fan and pointed it at the laptop while SFILL ran. This held the internal temps down to hot 74 degrees.

SFILL needs a flag to tell how many passes to make (like most such programs offer). Perhaps the -l or -ll flags mean fewer passes? It’s not clear from the man pages.

As posters note, to truly protect a disk against forensics you need to physically destroy it. But for practical purposes I’ve used DBAN and trust it -- you can set the number of passes as high as you want.

Anyway, I’d be interested in a solution to your question as well.

I tried adding -i in the parameters (in nautilus) but then srm would not function. I then tried using -i in the terminal and I got a message that it was an invalid function (or something to that effect).

Any ideas how to get a prompt before nuking my files?

Disclaimer: I’m a total noobie with linux (and this site has been a huge help).

First Install nautilus-actions package using the following command in the terminal

sudo aptitude install nautilus-actions

Now Open up Nautilus Actions Configuration from System->Preference->Nautilus Actions Configuration Click Add

Enter the following details

Label: Srm
Tooltip: Srm utility to securely erase files
Icon: gtk-dialog-warning
Path: srm
Parameters: -rv %M

Click on the Conditions tab Under the “Appears if selection contains“, check “both”

Check the box “Appears if selection has multiple files or folders“. Click OK

Open up a terminal, run the following commands to update the nautilus

nautilus -q

nautilus

From Now right click on any files, you should be able to see the wipe command in the menu.You can check above procedure for screenshots.

I don’t think adding a shred option to nautilus is a good idea.

In file-by-file mode shred can, at best, securely delete the sectors currently allocated to a file
(as none of these tools can guarantee that all caching is disabled, or that the exact same sectors will be used in the re-writes, they cannot even do that).

If the file recently shrunk then the de-allocated sectors won’t be wiped.

Many applications save new versions of working data in a new file (rather than replacing the old date in-situ) leaving ghost copies on your disk. Then there are backups, spool files, intermediate working files, …
In short, deleting the current working file may not be enough.

Nautilus may not show backup files created by various applications (this can be mitigated by selecting “show hidden files”).

Having a nautilus option to shred is user-friendly, but using it without understanding the limitations it dangerous, all you get is a false sense of security.

Unfortunately “user friendly” and “secure” are often opposite (worse still, people often confuse “user friendly” with “useful” and thus sacrifice too much security in order to gain productivity).

All I’d recommend to novice users is dban-ing disks before disposing of them.
Anything else isn’t fool-proof enough for the novice user.

(I’ll try it here: “--”)

You see, it did it again.

I for one appreciate the ‘add to nautilus’ section of this article. Very end user friendly and accesible.

Yes, although it really doesn’t interest me in any way, I think this piece of information may be very important for others, therefore, it shouldn’t be simply erased. But still, it wouldn’t interrupt the reading flow as much if these instructions were only linked to from this page.

2 cents

My 2.5 cents added.

@Thomas (or whoever posted this article):
I forgot to rant about the hyphens; WordPress or some other software with auto-error-insertion replaced the two hyphens (I’ll try it here: “--”) with an n-dash; that’s somewhat disturbing when occurring with options (like “-v, –verbose”).

2 cents

thx

p-root