How To Install zerofree on Fedora 34

zerofree is Utility to force unused ext2/3/4 inodes and blocks to zero

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install zerofree on Fedora 34.

What is zerofree

zerofree is a utility to set unused filesystem inodes and blocks of an ext2/3/4 filesystem to zero. This can improve the compressibility and privacy of an ext2/3/4 filesystem. This tool was inspired by the ext2fs privacy (i.e. secure deletion) patch described in a Linux kernel mailing list thread. WARNING read-only. The tool tries to check this before running, but you should be careful.

We can use yum or dnf to install zerofree on Fedora 34. In this tutorial we discuss both methods but you only need to choose one of method to install zerofree.

Install zerofree on Fedora 34 Using dnf

Update yum database with dnf using the following command.

sudo dnf makecache --refresh

The output should look something like this:

Fedora 34 - x86_64                               20 kB/s | 6.6 kB     00:00
Fedora 34 openh264 (From Cisco) - x86_64        1.4 kB/s | 989  B     00:00
Fedora Modular 34 - x86_64                       68 kB/s | 6.5 kB     00:00
Fedora 34 - x86_64 - Updates                    3.5 kB/s | 6.2 kB     00:01
Fedora Modular 34 - x86_64 - Updates             17 kB/s | 5.9 kB     00:00
Metadata cache created.

After updating yum database, We can install zerofree using dnf by running the following command:

sudo dnf -y install zerofree

Install zerofree on Fedora 34 Using yum

Update yum database with yum using the following command.

sudo yum makecache --refresh

The output should look something like this:

Fedora 34 - x86_64                               20 kB/s | 6.6 kB     00:00
Fedora 34 openh264 (From Cisco) - x86_64        1.4 kB/s | 989  B     00:00
Fedora Modular 34 - x86_64                       68 kB/s | 6.5 kB     00:00
Fedora 34 - x86_64 - Updates                    3.5 kB/s | 6.2 kB     00:01
Fedora Modular 34 - x86_64 - Updates             17 kB/s | 5.9 kB     00:00
Metadata cache created.

After updating yum database, We can install zerofree using yum by running the following command:

sudo yum -y install zerofree

How To Uninstall zerofree on Fedora 34

To uninstall only the zerofree package we can use the following command:

sudo dnf remove zerofree

zerofree Package Contents on Fedora 34

/usr/lib/.build-id
/usr/lib/.build-id/1c
/usr/lib/.build-id/1c/ed9860bbe579576b67c0f1e8d7387a54b73031
/usr/lib/.build-id/1f
/usr/lib/.build-id/1f/c52008a1da43e981eb208c30ee0eaccbbcb15c
/usr/sbin/sparsify
/usr/sbin/zerofree
/usr/share/doc/zerofree
/usr/share/doc/zerofree/index.html
/usr/share/licenses/zerofree
/usr/share/licenses/zerofree/COPYING
/usr/share/man/man8/zerofree.8.gz

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install zerofree on Fedora 34 using yum and dnf.