How to Install and Uninstall zerofree Package on Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla)

Last updated: May 13,2024

1. Install "zerofree" package

This tutorial shows how to install zerofree on Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla)


    
        
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                sudo apt update
            
                    
    
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                sudo apt install
            
                        
                zerofree
            
                    
    
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2. Uninstall "zerofree" package

Please follow the instructions below to uninstall zerofree on Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla):


    
        
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                sudo apt remove
            
                        
                zerofree
            
                    
    
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                sudo apt autoclean && sudo apt autoremove
            
                    
    
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3. Information about the zerofree package on Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla)

Package: zerofree
Architecture: amd64
Version: 1.1.1-1build1
Priority: extra
Section: admin
Origin: Ubuntu
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers
Original-Maintainer: Thibaut Paumard
Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug
Installed-Size: 30
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.4), libext2fs2 (>= 1.42)
Filename: pool/main/z/zerofree/zerofree_1.1.1-1build1_amd64.deb
Size: 8596
MD5sum: a53565a77e96df4c0fd8494ee869d483
SHA1: 6036f67da7d35afb6effdcdec31a11db6342e868
SHA256: d24a3615a7fd603ecb7215bc896f01be98f7579e59e1f3d98b429c1a46eef25d
SHA512: b21bd53beab12d9346361210eb5ee3d1b6329792776303d45e176ba45d0bd8acf0b93566bb0f3bb45155ff2f434ffa0ca4de53d3abf43f58547ad2b3d11369e1
Homepage: https://frippery.org/uml/
Description-en: 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.
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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.
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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").
Description-md5: e8c47b284082ddf9145a003c9cbeafdb
Task: server, cloud-image, server-raspi