OS disk scrubbing

[Jason Rueda]

I need to scrub all the disks for the server retirement. I was able to do that on
all nonos disks. This is running 10.20 OS

Is there a way to scrub the disks with vg00
group with /, /stand /usr etc.. file systems

thank you,
chak

[harry d brown jr]

The easiest way to scrub VG00 (the root disks) is to reinstall the OS onto one disk, then use the dd command to erase the others:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/dsk/blah count=sizeofdiskin512blocks

then install the OS on another disk, and erase the first using the above method. You also might be able to do a low level format, but I'm not too sure it will actually "erase" the disk.

another way is to remove the disk and place it into another system and use the dd command to "erase" it.

live free or die
harry

[Patrick Wallek]

I am having to do this as we speak. The way I am accomplishing this is that I got an external 23GB that I am reinstalling the OS on. After that is done, I will do a vgimport on the previous OS disks and scrub them from there.

The steps I took:

vgexport -m mapfile -p -v -s vg00

ftp mapfile to my personal workstation

Attach new disk and install OS

Boot from new OS.

ftp mapfile back to machine

mknod /dev/vg01/group c 64 0x010000

vgimport -m mapfile -v vg01

mount all stuff from vg01 and scrub the disks.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Hi:

I will add that not all systems have a /dev/zero device. You may need to create one via 'mknod /dev/zero c 3 0x000003' and then 'chmod 444 /dev/zero'.

[Bill Hassell]

An alternate method, perhaps faster especially with lots of disks is to run mediainit. This will erase everything including boot areas.

[Tim D Fulford]

If you are decommissioning the computer & feel a little evil

cd /
rm -rf *

alternatively

cd /
chmod -R 444 *

I'm sure all of the above is fine but far too much work!

Tim...

[Jason Rueda]

Many thanks to every one for the responses.
I got an external disk, and will do what
Patrick suggested.
chak