File/filesystem sterilization [was: report cards read-only on floppy]

[Sy Ali]

On 11/28/06, Mike Oliver <moliver-fC0AHe2n+mcIvw5+aKnW+Pd9D2ou9A/h at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Sy Ali wrote:
>
> > So yes, file shreding and free space wiping is the answer.. but it's
> > terribly inconvenient to do sometimes.. so maybe using a thumb drive
> > etc is indeed easier for security reasons (and worse for lifespan
> > reasons)
>
> How *do* you wipe free space on an ext2 or ext3 filesystem?  I've
> never seen a utility specifically for that; I'd assume there must
> be one.  (Of course you can always do "cat /dev/urandom > a" and
> wait till it fails on a full filesystem, then "rm a", but I'd think
> there'd be a cleaner solution somewhere.)

I found a few ways, and took some notes here:

http://jrandomhacker.info/Data_sterilization

I do have a method for sterilizing free space.  It's pretty easy actually.
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