Ubuntu Security :: Secure-delete Won't Work On Larger Files / Sort It?
Sep 16, 2010
I'm trying to clean a hard drive and I'm using secure-delete but it just stands there and takes cpu power but nothing happens, I used -r switch first and nothing, so I tried it on single files, small pictures worked as intended but a simple 50MB MPG file just stands there as well and nothing happens.
I left it running for 24 hours and nothing happened but the cpu was working at 90-100% all the time :/
I don't use the Trash bin because it does not really delete things,speaking from a security point Instead, I gotten used to 'shred' and 'secure-delete' .But to move around files, cut-n-paste is very handy.And I was wandering if items from the Clip get stored somewhere ?i realize that they get overwritten again and again in the clipboard but do they also get stored somewhere else?
i have an issue due to some high security requirements. what i want to do is to remove the files in trash folder permanently from the memory so that they cannot be recovered again. am aware of the "shred" command but i dont know if it can reach to files that are already in trash.I have found a solution but it requires to fill the whole unused memory with a file that consist of some ramdom bits and than deletes it:
I was running a 2-partition hard drive, Windows Vista (lamentably) on one partition, and the other running Ubuntu. I began having trouble with the Vista partition, so I attempted to move as many of the files that I really wanted to keep as possible over to the Ubuntu partition, and then reformat and reinstall the Vista partition. As a result, I could no longer boot to Ubuntu, and I consistently got errors back from everything that I tried on the Vista partition.
The only way that I can now access anything on the hard drive is to insert the Ubuntu install disk, go into trial mode, then mount the partition. At long last, here is the problem: Is there anyway to possibly make the partition bootable again so that I could burn the files to a disk? From trial mode I can get to a number of the files on the mounted partition, HOWEVER, they are secured with the username and password of my user account on that partition. Is there any way that I can access the files from the trial mode by entering my username/password?
I'm an Oracle DBA and started working for my current employer about 4 months ago. This past weekend an alert re: FS space brought my attention to /var/spool/clientmqueue (full of mail re: cron jobs) and the fact that sendmail is not running on our Linux servers.I'm told that the IT security team deemed sendmail too vulnerable so we don't run it.Aside from FS filling up and missing notification of issues with crontab entries, I'm concerned that we may be missing notification of potential issues. In other Unix/Linux environments I've seen emails from the print daemon when it experienced problems with specific jobs.
Are there other Linux facilities aside from cron and lpd that use email to advise the users of possible issues? Are there ways to secure sendmail or secure alternatives to sendmail? My primary need/desire is to make sure that emails regarding issues on the server get to the appropriate users. Secondary goal would be to have the ability to use mailx to send mail out. There is No need/desire to receive mail from outside.
I have some very confidental files on my computer that I store such as credit reports, and other things. I always encrypt them with GPG, but there still is that original non-encrypted file left that needs to be deleted. I looked into tools like wipe, and shred but they all say that it really doesn't help on journaling filesystems directly on their man page.
I am not asking how to wipe the whole drive with dd or anything, but I am simply asking if there is a tool that'll delete a single file securely.
I hope that I'm posting this thread in the right place. This involves a very unique problem which has caused the .Trash-1000 folder for my external USB drive to become corrupted, to the point of causing massive heat problems which then causes my system to crash, i.e. become completely inoperable, forcing me to do a hard reset.
The scenario: Recently I went through all of my backup data which is what I use that external USB drive for. After finding several GB of data files, some dating back 2 - 3 years from a root server that I used to have, I went ahead and tried to delete all of those files. Well, with exception to 3 folders, containing no more than perhaps 35 files which totalled less than 8 MB in space, everything was deleted properly without a hitch. The files that couldn't be deleted prompted some strange "couldn't delete blahblahblah file due to input/output error" message. One message for each file that couldn't be deleted.
Now mind you, I can open these files, look at them, rename them, copy them, but I cannot delete them. Still being pretty wet as far as Linux is concerned, I tried numerous suggestions that I could find on the internet, all of which had to do with file permissions in one form or another. I've tried everything that made any sense and still can't delete those files.
All of the data is my own, all of the hardware is mine, and I'm the only one using this machine. I'm not attempting to do anything illegal. Then I figured, smart as I am, why don't I just assign ownership of the .Trash folder to myself via the chown -R command, followed by deleting the files afterwards. Okay, the chown command gave me no error, I assumed all was well since it's my USB drive to begin with and since it automounts during every restart anyway. I just figured that this would be something to try. BIG MISTAKE !!!
My system runs just as perfectly as before, with but one exception. NOW, when I attempt to delete those files that I couldn't delete before, I don't get an error message anymore but the CPU starts hyperventilating during the deletion process which goes on endlessly (remember, we're taking about less than 8 MB of data) ... ultimately causing the system to crash, i.e. become totally unresponsive. NOW, if I delete additional files from that USB drive and then attempt to empty the trash, the newly deleted files take substantially longer too now. Not as long as the original "bad files" but still quite long. The drive itself checks out fine and it's not a dual-boot system with Windows. Just did a virus check recently too and everything checks out in that regard as well.
Can someone tell me how to reassign whatever original values there were for that external drive .Trash folder? I think if I could restore those values to whatever they used to be before I used the chown -R command, perhaps then everything would be fine again as far as the crashing is concerned. HELP .... (Please take a look at the screenshots too)
The last screenshots shows "preparing to delete" which takes a very long time. Then it takes anywhere from 15 to 45 seconds PER FILE before that miniscule file is actually supposedly deleted. Eventually, after a few files are deleted, the system crashes. I wrote "supposedly deleted" because after a reboot the files are still there .
I have read in some book that syslogd keeps lots of logs that with the time consume a considerably part of your hard drive. I know this is very nice feature and all that, but sometimes privacy in this competitive world is a matter fact. Here goes the questions: Is it possible to 'auto delete' the syslogd files automatically? May the destruction of the logs make some hangs on my system? May some program need the daemon to function properly?
look at this : Uploaded with ImageShack.us how can set permissions in linux like this? I want one user can delete files but can't modify them and ... in linux i have 3 group to assign read write and execute them. is ntfs flexible than linux file system?
I've discovered that after restoring my site's backup this has happened to me again. How to delete the hacked /home/crocbits directory so that I can restore the backup under the same username. When I try to delete /home/crocbits I get this message when logged in as root:
Using Samba I have looked into the file that stores all my web sites, there were a few strange files that get larger and larger all the time. File names are _Za01716 and _Za01820, they are nearly 50mb in size now. I know these are not Log files so what are they and can I delete them?
I downloaded "secure-delete" from the Ubuntu Software Center, but it doesn't have any instructions, there is no website, and it does not appear in the Apps tab. I can't even begin to begin using it. How do I get this going? I haven't the faintest idea how to use the terminal programs.
I have this file that is about 3.6GB, I'm trying to open it through wine. But it gives me an error saying I can't open it. I'm not sure if this is a problem with wine, or do I need some special code to put in the terminal?
I seem to be missing a secure.log or security.log file. I have Ubuntu 10.04 and can't find this file. I looked in the /var/log and ran a search command to no avail. Does anyone know where this file is or is it called something else. I'm looking for a file that logs any change to the security settings of the system.
I erase XP and do a clean install of 10.04 netbook remix on my Acer AspireOne. Almost everything seems to be working ok (so far.....3hrs after installation and still testing!) except for:
1: My main partition is formatted as ext4, and when I try copy back any (video .iso !) file that is larger than 4.1 gb I get a memory error and so only copies the file incomplete up to 4.1 gb. I know this problem under windows FAT vs NTSF but I have read that ext4 was beyond this... So what did I do wrong? Is the solution to switch the ext4 to ext3 and can this be done without loss of installed programs or files.
2: Video and Sound with video is not good. Lots of disturbance/turbulence and for sure not optimal for both video and sound.
3: my internal micophone is not working in Skype but it does with Sound-Recorder...I connected external mic and this works, but with lots of disturbance. Also the voice sound from telephone calls sound is not as should be.
The "hardware drivers" utility tells me that all is good and no proprietary drivers are in use on the system.
I am trying to use an old box as backup server. I have tried a couple of possibilities along the lines of:
Quote:
rsync -a --delete --progress --log-file=/home/$USER/info.txt -e ssh /home /etc root@192.168.0.106:/mnt/back
The problem is it does not delete files that has been removed from my local system? I run the command as root on the local system.
(I realize I should properly not ssh into the server as the server's root but I'm having trouble with the permissions and I want to make sure everything else works before messing around with it)
I just can't stand knowing that there's a slight problem with my PC.I have roughly 12.5 Gigs of files, mostly movies that are multiple clones of a particular movie (which was an entirely different problem altogether) and I CANNOT DELETE THESE THINGS! There has to be a simple way to do it from terminal, problem is, I can't seem to find the trash directory in terminal.
I set up my ubuntu server with iptables that only allows ssh in the input chain (and of course established connections) with only the mac adress of my laptop allowed to connect, set up a key with a long passphrase and installed pam_abl plugin. ICMP echo is blocked by default.
The only problem is i log all other attempts to connect to the server and i see a lot of traffic going to ports 445 and 5900.
My question is: Is there a possibility that these attempts could succeed and is there any way to further ensure this server?
Newbie here, I'm thinking of moving mostly to linux to get away from the security holes in Windows. And I have some questions...
How secure is Firefox for doing online banking?
Sometimes I have run into a situation where the bank doesn't support anything but Windows explorer when accessing my accounts. Can this be gotten around safely in Linux?
Is there any way to secure harddisk accessbility ? i want encrypt my hard disk, and partitions that ubuntu installed on that. is there a way ? i want deny all access to hard disk, just my own root account can have access to all.
Ok im new, i know apparmor is running. i was looking for firestarter but their isnt one.....how do i secure this server? i want a good firewall and some virus protection!. also do i need this?
I want to set up a website that hosts very confidential business information. The info needs to be accessed by multiple people in different geographical regions. The entire website would require the high security (ie: there are no little sections that are publicly viewable). While the site will be run with Ubuntu server, I will be hosting it in Amazon's EC2 cloud.
So, if I use the HTTPS protocol with an SSL certificate, am I pretty well reaching the most secure possible situation? Are there any concerns with using the EC2 solution? Obviously there are a LOT of variables involved with maintaining website security, but I want to know if HTTPS is the current best bet (in addition to all the "best practices" of securing a site) or if there is a more robust way of securing content.
