A
Anonymous
Guest
I do appreciate this utility, but I’m not familiar with Unix syntax so the documents are difficult for me to understand.
I plan to use a computer I took out of service a couple of months ago as a ‘wipe stand’ for hard drives. Since it has no keyboard or monitor I want to do a fully automatic erase. By this I mean, with the nuke disk in floppy drive A: I want to boot the floppy and automatically erase all drives connected to the computer (up to 4) – no human intervention. I interpret the documents to say I can do this, but . . .
In the readme file it says:
I’m uncertain what the “boot prompt” is. Before reading these docs I would have understood that to mean ‘After booting enter autonuke at the A:> prompt.’ If this is what it means it requires a keyboard and thus is not “automatic.”
When I look at the syslinux.cft file as suggested I find this:
Since I cannot test my assumptions these questions are not trivial to me. I can’t afford to test the disk on a working computer because if, as the above paragraph at the beginning of this post says, the action is “AUTOMATIC” I will destroy the data on the computer. On the other hand I cannot test it on the target computer because I’m operating blind (no monitor or keyboard), and thus I have no way to tell whether what I’m guessing is happening is really happening.
Could someone confirm my rewrite of the comment is correct? This is, if I change the first prompt to 0 and replace deban with autonuke in the second prompt, after booting it will immediately begin wiping the drives without the need for key presses?
Question 2:
I couldn’t find where it was explained which protocol (gutmann, etc) and which verification level (0,1,2) are used if one does uses autonuke.
Question 3:
I assume I can tell when the operations are complete because the drive lamp on the front panel will go out. Is that correct?
Thanks
jim
I plan to use a computer I took out of service a couple of months ago as a ‘wipe stand’ for hard drives. Since it has no keyboard or monitor I want to do a fully automatic erase. By this I mean, with the nuke disk in floppy drive A: I want to boot the floppy and automatically erase all drives connected to the computer (up to 4) – no human intervention. I interpret the documents to say I can do this, but . . .
In the readme file it says:
Automatic Wiping
----------------
Enter "autonuke" at the boot prompt to automatically wipe all devices in the
computer without confirmation. Note that you may change the default behavior of
DBAN by editing the 'syslinux.cfg' file that is on the floppy disk.
I’m uncertain what the “boot prompt” is. Before reading these docs I would have understood that to mean ‘After booting enter autonuke at the A:> prompt.’ If this is what it means it requires a keyboard and thus is not “automatic.”
When I look at the syslinux.cft file as suggested I find this:
The term ‘label’ is unfamiliar to me in this context, but I’m guessing the above comment could be written:# Set this option to zero if you wish to skip the boot prompt.
PROMPT 1
# This label will be started if you just push enter at the boot prompt, or if
# you set the PROMPT option above to zero.
DEFAULT dban
If you leave “dban” in the line below dban will appear at the command prompt after you boot. And, when you press return/enter a menu of options/choices will be displayed. If you replace “dban” with “autonuke” in the line below autonuke will be displayed. In this case if you press enter all disks attached to the computer will be erased/wiped. If you want these things to happen automatically when you boot (without you pressing a key) change the value beside the PROMPT above to from 1 to 0 (zero).
DEFAULT dban
Since I cannot test my assumptions these questions are not trivial to me. I can’t afford to test the disk on a working computer because if, as the above paragraph at the beginning of this post says, the action is “AUTOMATIC” I will destroy the data on the computer. On the other hand I cannot test it on the target computer because I’m operating blind (no monitor or keyboard), and thus I have no way to tell whether what I’m guessing is happening is really happening.
Could someone confirm my rewrite of the comment is correct? This is, if I change the first prompt to 0 and replace deban with autonuke in the second prompt, after booting it will immediately begin wiping the drives without the need for key presses?
Question 2:
I couldn’t find where it was explained which protocol (gutmann, etc) and which verification level (0,1,2) are used if one does uses autonuke.
Question 3:
I assume I can tell when the operations are complete because the drive lamp on the front panel will go out. Is that correct?
Thanks
jim