Wipe disk on BL20p

[jerrym]

Does anyone know of a ios that I can boot with on a BL20p to wipe the disk?

Tried BOOT-DISK.ISO but does not boot or mount.

Cannot find DBAN that will burn to CD.

Or some other method to erase the disk so it can be returned other than rm -r /.

[Matti_Kurkela · Accepted solution]

What exactly is the "BOOT-DISK.ISO" you tried? The name does not refer to any specific software: where did you get it from?

All the versions of DBAN are available here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/files/dban/

Once you download the .iso file, use the "Burn Image" or a similar function of your CD burning program to the CD as-is. Do not extract the .iso file or add it as a file to the root directory of the CD - either method will produce a non-bootable result.

(The .iso image file contains CD-ROM boot metadata that will be discarded if you extract the .iso, and won't be placed properly to the CD if you just add the .iso or the files contained within it to your CD burning program. Only using the .iso file with the "burn image" function of the CD burning program will achieve the proper result.)

For example, once you've burned the dban-2.2.6_i586.iso to the CD, the CD should be mountable and should show 8 files in it: about.txt, dban.bzi, isolinux.bin, isolinux.cat, isolinux.cfg, quick.txt, raid.txt and warning.txt. These files should also be visible if you access the CD in a Windows workstation/laptop. If those files don't appear, the burn operation was not successful: don't even bother trying to boot from the CD in that case. Instead figure out what went wrong and/or try another CD burning program and start over: on Linux, you can burn .iso images to CDs from the command line with commands like cdrecord, cdrdao or wodim. On Windows, www.imgburn.com offers a free .iso image burning program that should be ideal for this purpose.

Not all external USB CD-ROM drives can be used to successfully boot a BL20p: if the drive takes too much time to initialize when it receives a reset signal at boot time, the boot sequence will assume there is no CD in the drive and will try other boot sources. I've had good results with a LG model GSA-2166D that was originally bought in 2007 or so.

[jerrym]

BOOT-DSK.ISO is from www.boot-disk.net   Have booted DL385's with it using Virtual Media in the iLO. But won't boot on a BL20p.

I tried burning the dban-2.2.6_i586.iso and can mount it, sometimes, on the REHL 4 os running on the BL20p. It shows only the iso image and no other files. But when I try to boot it as CDROM, it cannot and goes to next boot order which is the Linux OS.

Think I read somewhere about maybe using an older version, dban-1.0.6_i386.iso maybe??

I am using the HP IP CONSOLE VIEWER to access the BL20p console. Noticed there is a tab at the top of

the console window under tools that has Virtual Media, but it is grayed out. I use the F9 at boot and set boot order to CDROM first.  Tries to boot the CDROM or only a second or two then boots the linux os.

The Sony CD/DVD drive my be a problem also. Will check the CD for the files you mentioned. And trying the older dban.

[jerrym]

I was able to boot with the dban-1.0.6_i386.iso image. Disks being nuked.

Thanks for your input.

[Matti_Kurkela]

> I tried burning the dban-2.2.6_i586.iso and can mount it, sometimes, on the REHL 4 os running on the BL20p. > It shows only the iso image and no other files. 

Just as I suspected: this is a sure sign you did not burn it the right way and the resulting CD is definitely not bootable. If it's a CD-RW, erase it; if it's a CD-R, throw it in the trash.

What CD burning program are you using?

For some reason, many CD burning programs treat burning a ready-made .ISO image file as an "advanced" action, and hide it into some menu or other. The regular "burn some files and directories to CD" function is not the one you want with .ISO files.

[jerrym]

I am just using the Windows 7 built in. I went back and was able to burn it properly with all the files in it. So I do not know what happened before that it only burned the iso file only. ??