On 01/13/2013 05:10 AM, Carl T. Miller wrote: > Hmm. I find it odd that you're saying something doesn't work when I've > seen it work. Don't forget shred is loaded into memory and that echo is > an internal command and hence stored in memory. The final command turns > off the system, effectively clearing the memory. Well, it won't work reliably. If the kernel tries to read the filesystem, it's going to panic (which I've also seen; your anecdote does not prove the process to be reliable). Even *fixing* a broken filesystem while it's mounted can cause a panic. Try running fsck on a mounted filesystem (even one mounted read-only). You'll be warned not to do that for a reason.