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I had a script for securely emptying my trash bin from time to time and I was using srm. I suppose people would still have uses for srm. However, it appears that srm no longer ships with mac os. Are you aware of a candidate alternative to srm? Any word by anyone at all?

P.S. For example, here is random example where srm is used for securely emptying the trash bin. Notice that the example is for El Capitan, so srm disappeared in mac os Sierra (or at least, this appears to be the case).

3 Answers3

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You can use rm -P

     -P          Overwrite regular files before deleting them.  Files are overwritten three times, first with the byte pattern 0xff, then 0x00, and then 0xff again, before they are deleted.
Matteo
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  1. Install MacPorts and ...
  2. Find ports: srm
  3. Terminal: sudo port install srm
Z-N
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Apple removed srm because they felt it didn't work well enough and because using it on a SSD decreases the overall life of the drive. If you really want to use it you can download the source, unzip it, and then compile it yourself.

$ ./configure
$ make
$ make install