Unusual Question

[Matthew Seaman]

On 2017/07/10 10:34, Matthew Seaman wrote:
> On 2017/07/09 10:57, Doug Hardie wrote:
>> I have a FreeBSD 9.3 remote server that needs to be purged.  I know
>> that rm -rf / will remove all the directory entries, but I need to
>> write over the drive.  I thought that dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ada0
>> might do the trick, but it gives an not permitted error.  The whole
>> thing can crash and burn at the end.  This is an unmanned site so
>> moving drives is not viable.
> 
> I'd do this by usinf dd(1) but slightly more carefully.  You need a
> small, temporary, bootable partition that contains dd(8).  This could be
> either by booting from install media -- although as you say, the machine
> is in an unmanned location so that may not be feasible -- or you could
> possibly re-purpose an existing swap partition.  You can then zero out
> each of the other partitions /dev/ada0p1 etc on your drive -- the idea
> being not to try and delete the OS you're running from, as that will
> likely crash in the middle and leave things half deleted.
> 

Um.. to clarify.  The temporary partition should contain /not only/
dd(8) but also at minimum /all the other basic stuff the system needs to
boot into a single user shell/ -- given you haven't got a remote
console, then you'ld all the stuff so you could configure it with
networking and bring it up multiuser.

	Cheers,

	Matthew


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