topic Root disk delete? in Operating System - HP-UX

Root disk delete?

James M. Dunn — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 16:05:23 GMT

What is the best way to erase a root disk so it cant be used anymore?

Thanks

J

Re: Root disk delete?

Deoncia Grayson_1 — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 16:10:29 GMT

Some prefer doing a dd to the disk because a mediainit takes to long but they both will erase your root disk:

Discussion of interest:
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=985801

Re: Root disk delete?

Chan 007 — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 16:17:28 GMT

James,

use any of the following
1. pvcreate -f
2. dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rdsk/ bs=1024k
3. rm -rf /etc, /stand, /usr

Enjoy..!!!

Chan

Re: Root disk delete?

Geoff Wild — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 17:22:01 GMT

Re-install the OS.

After that, just do a rm -rf /

Rgds...Geoff

Re: Root disk delete?

MarkSyder — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 03:46:28 GMT

When you say "so it can't be used any more" do you mean that literally? If so, you could do what we do: take it out of the server/workstation and bang it on the corner of an overhead cabinet. It definitely can't be used any more then!

Mark Syder (like the drink but spelt different)

Re: Root disk delete?

Mark Nieuwboer — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 04:09:55 GMT

Hi James,

If you want the data can't be read by any program. Then you need to write the disk 3 times completly.
If you just want to destroy the disk. Get it trhough a shredder.

grtz. Mark

Re: Root disk delete?

Doug Burton — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 06:25:04 GMT

I've used mediainit without any problems but some folks say it can cause problems.

mediainit -v /dev/rdsk/c?t?d?

However, this is what I do:

rm -rf /stand/* /etc/*
then I do....
for x in `ls /dev/rdsk`
do
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rdsk/${x} bs=1024k &
done

Run this to watch the fun...

while true
do
date ; ps -ef | grep zero | grep -v grep | awk '{print $10}' | sort ; echo "\n\n" ; sleep 30
done

The reboot and shutdown commands are now gone so you'll need to get on the GSP or physically get to the server to down it the rest of the way.

Re: Root disk delete?

James M. Dunn — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 10:18:21 GMT

Mark & Mark,

Funny :)

All good answers. I will be trading the servers in and dont want to destroy the hardware just the data.

Thanks!

J

Re: Root disk delete?

MarkSyder — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 10:30:38 GMT

Strangely enough, it wasn't a joke - that's really what we do if we don't want a disc to be used again.

Mark

Re: Root disk delete?

James M. Dunn — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 10:35:45 GMT