5 Return values

The WipeFreeSpace program can return any of the following values:

• 0: All actions on the last file system succeeded (no errors).
• 1: Only version number, help or licence information was requested and printed, no action.
• -1: Bad/missing command line syntax.
• -2: Unable to check if the file system is mounted. Cannot continue.
• -3: The file system was mounted in read-write mode. Cannot continue.
• -4: Unable to open the file system.
• -5: Unable to read block bitmap from the file system (thus, unable to determine, which blocks are unused).
• -6: Memory allocation failed.
• -7: The file system contained errors and the option --force was not given.
• -8: Closing the file system failed.
• -9: Opening i-node scan failed. Thus, the program was unable to wipe free space in partially used blocks.
• -10: Iterating over blocks failed. Thus, the program was unable to wipe free space in partially used blocks.
• -11: I-node read failed. Some undelete data may not have been removed.
• -12: Directory iterating failed. Thus, the program was unable to remove some of (maybe all) undelete data.
• -13: The program found out that it has the suid permission bit set and the owner is root. Read the first chapter of this documentation for an explanation and a solution.
• -14: Flushing the changes to the filesystem failed.
• -15: Block writing failed.
• -16: Failed to open an attribute (mostly on NTFS).
• -17: Failed runlist on NTFS.
• -18: Getting name failed.
• -19: Context error (NTFS).
• -20: Bad parameter was passed to one of the functions.
• -21: Pipe error (mostly XFS).
• -22: Fork error (XFS, ReiserFSv3 or NTFS).
• -23: Exec error (XFS).
• -24: Seek error (mostly ReiserFSv4).
• -25: Block reading failed.
• -26: I/O control command (ioctl) failed.
• -100: A signal was caught and the program was forced to exit.
• 128+N: The program was terminated by signal number N (the signal either wasn’t caught or was caught after SIGCONT was received).

NOTE: Actually, the negative values are subtracted from 256, so -1 could turn up as 255, -2 as 254 and so on.

NOTE: Only the last error is returned. If the last file system was wiped successfully, but the previous weren’t, the last error will be returned, but not the previous ones.