Package: zerofree (1.0.4-1 and others)

[ Source: zerofree  ]

zero free blocks from ext2, ext3 and ext4 file-systems

Zerofree finds the unallocated blocks with non-zero value content in an ext2, ext3 or ext4 file-system and fills them with zeroes (zerofree can also work with another value than zero). This is mostly useful if the device on which this file-system resides is a disk image. In this case, depending on the type of disk image, a secondary utility may be able to reduce the size of the disk image after zerofree has been run. Zerofree requires the file-system to be unmounted or mounted read-only.

The usual way to achieve the same result (zeroing the unused blocks) is to run "dd" to create a file full of zeroes that takes up the entire free space on the drive, and then delete this file. This has many disadvantages, which zerofree alleviates:

 * it is slow;
 * it makes the disk image (temporarily) grow to its maximal extent;
 * it (temporarily) uses all free space on the disk, so other
   concurrent write actions may fail.

Zerofree has been written to be run from GNU/Linux systems installed as guest OSes inside a virtual machine. If this is not your case, you almost certainly don't need this package. (One other use case would be to erase sensitive data a little bit more securely than with a simple "rm").

Tags: System Administration: Filesystem Tool, Implemented in: C, Role: Program

Other Packages Related to zerofree

• dep: e2fslibs (>= 1.37)

  ext2/ext3/ext4 file system libraries

• dep: libc0.1 (>= 2.17-91) [kfreebsd-amd64, kfreebsd-i386]

  GNU C Library: Shared libraries
  also a virtual package provided by libc0.1-udeb

• dep: libc0.3 (>= 2.4) [hurd-i386]

  GNU C Library: Shared libraries
  also a virtual package provided by libc0.3-udeb

• dep: libc6 (>= 2.16) [x32]

  GNU C Library: Shared libraries
  also a virtual package provided by libc6-udeb

  dep: libc6 (>= 2.17) [arm64, ppc64el]

  dep: libc6 (>= 2.24) [sh4]

  dep: libc6 (>= 2.3.4) [hppa]

  dep: libc6 (>= 2.4) [not alpha, arm64, hppa, hurd-i386, kfreebsd-amd64, kfreebsd-i386, ppc64el, sh4, x32]

• dep: libc6.1 (>= 2.4) [alpha]

  GNU C Library: Shared libraries
  also a virtual package provided by libc6.1-udeb

Download zerofree

Download for all available architectures

Architecture	Version	Package Size	Installed Size	Files
alpha (unofficial port)	1.0.4-1	8.2 kB	26.0 kB	[list of files]
amd64	1.0.4-1	7.9 kB	25.0 kB	[list of files]
arm64	1.0.4-1	7.9 kB	25.0 kB	[list of files]
armel	1.0.4-1	9.3 kB	25.0 kB	[list of files]
armhf	1.0.4-1	7.8 kB	25.0 kB	[list of files]
hppa (unofficial port)	1.0.4-1	8.4 kB	25.0 kB	[list of files]
hurd-i386	1.0.4-1	8.0 kB	25.0 kB	[list of files]
i386	1.0.4-1	8.0 kB	25.0 kB	[list of files]
kfreebsd-amd64	1.0.4-1	7.8 kB	25.0 kB	[list of files]
kfreebsd-i386	1.0.4-1	8.0 kB	25.0 kB	[list of files]
m68k (unofficial port)	1.0.4-1	7.8 kB	25.0 kB	[list of files]
mips	1.0.4-1	8.1 kB	25.0 kB	[list of files]
mips64el	1.0.4-1	8.2 kB	26.0 kB	[list of files]
mipsel	1.0.4-1	8.1 kB	25.0 kB	[list of files]
powerpc	1.0.4-1	8.0 kB	81.0 kB	[list of files]
powerpcspe (unofficial port)	1.0.4-1	8.1 kB	81.0 kB	[list of files]
ppc64 (unofficial port)	1.0.4-1	8.2 kB	82.0 kB	[list of files]
ppc64el	1.0.4-1	8.1 kB	81.0 kB	[list of files]
s390x	1.0.4-1	8.0 kB	25.0 kB	[list of files]
sh4 (unofficial port)	1.0.4-1	8.1 kB	25.0 kB	[list of files]
sparc64 (unofficial port)	1.0.4-1+b1	8.1 kB	27.0 kB	[list of files]
x32 (unofficial port)	1.0.4-1	7.9 kB	25.0 kB	[list of files]