wipe

Runs on:

QNX OS

Options:

-a

Enable asynchronous wipe operation.

-d

Enable direct I/O for overwrite wipe method.

-e

Enable enumeration of wipe units.

-f

Enable free space wiping only.

-i

Enable insecure wipe method, if supported.

-l number[kmg]

The erase unit size limiter. The -l number option can be suffixed with:

• K or k for kilobytes (KB)
• M or m for megabytes (MB)
• G or g for gigabytes (GB)

If no suffix is supplied, the value is interpreted as bytes.

-m method

The method of the wipe operation, where method is one of:

• w or write — data wiped by overwriting with zeroes
• e or erase — data wiped by erasing in multiples of erase blocks
• t or trim — data wiped by erasing in multiples of write blocks
• d or discard — data wiped by marking blocks as discarded (insecure)

-s scope

The scope of the wipe operation, where scope is one of:

• f, fs or fsys
• p, part or partition
• d, dev or device
• fd or file

-t

Enable test mode (does not wipe data).

-u

Enable auto-unmount when the target is a mounted filesystem.

-v

Increase the verbosity level.

-x

Bypass filesystem cache coherency operations.

Warning:

Take extreme caution with this flag. By default, filesystem cache coherency is enforced by invalidating any cache buffers associated with the wipe target range. This is required in order to remove cached contents of the erased range from memory. The use of this flag bypasses such filesystem cache coherency operations, so cached data of the wipe target will be exposed following execution of the wipe. This is insecure and could have dangerous side effects, so this option should be used with great care.

target_path

The path of the target device or filesystem to wipe.

Description:

The wipe utility securely wipes all data from a medium. A secure wipe permanently destroys all data residing on the target_path. The default behavior is to perform the operation synchronously, so the program will not return until the operation has been completed.