Ubuntu :: Wiping HDD Without Having To Run Or Install
Oct 17, 2010
I have an Ubuntu 10.04 live CD it works I would like to know how I could wipe the HDD, but there are some complications. It doesn't run the live CD because of something on the HDD so I'd like to be able to wipe the HDD without having to run or install Ubuntu i can get up a command line thing though by pressing Esc from the graphic setup. By the way I can get to the setup screen with the options install run scan for defects etc but when i click on install or run it stops after a while.
I have Debian installed and I want to install Fedora. Is there a way to install Fedora without erasing the drives? I have my /home directory that don't want erased, plus several GB of files stored in other partitions as well as other drives.
If not, then is there a fast and easy way to back up everything?
Is there a handy program that wipes my RAM at each shut down to prevent RAM attacks and recovering passphrases? Is this even possible? I have a truecrypt volume and have read that it is vulnerable to these RAM attacks.
I upgraded from ubuntu 9.10 to 10.04. I was wondering if there was a way to downgrade back to 9.10 without wiping the hd. 10.04 has to many problumes right now
I have an Asus Eee 1000H with win7 installed dual booting with the NBremix. I installed Adobe CS3 to the win7 side and everytime I run CS3 it wipes out grub causing me to use the live-stick and re-install grub.
Because I install/uninstall a fair few operating systems, I occasionally run Kill Disk off Hirens Boot CD to clean my drive.Being a 500GB Drive this takes about 12 hours.Is there any benefit to doing this? ie. drive longevity, speed, etc
My laptop has had it, so I am getting a new net book instead. So with my old laptop, I am giving it to a charity who refurb them and send them overseas.Not that I do not trust them, but they say they wipe the hard drive to US Department of Defense standard 5220.22M. But I would feel a lot happier if I did it myself first, so how do I go about doing it? I have tried using wipe but as it was a tar file I got stuck trying to use the tar file.
Somehow I've messed up something in Handbrake that causes queued items to not run. I'd like to wipe out my settings and start over. What file/directory are these stored in?
What happens when you wipe a hard drive which has a partition that is mounted? I was using ubuntu 9.10 live CD but I had one partition on a hard drive mounted. Then, I started to wipe the entire hard drive with random characters using dd. Only later I realized that I hadn't unmounted that partition. what could have happened? Could the Live CD have been damaged?
I'd like to wipe free space on a fat 32 partition, momentary by doing
Code:
cat /dev/urandom >garbage
That stops each time the file is 4GB big, as this is the maximum supported filesize for fat32 partitions. So I redo the command, only writing now to "garbage2" or so.Is there any more elegant way to do that? Maybe by script which automatically generates new file names, until the disc is full?
Laptop has a fault and needs to go back to dell. I have no idea what they may or may not do it; regardless I want to completely wipe the hard drive (and then put windows back on to keep them happy).
I'm having trouble since I installed the newest kernel update. I only have one desktop. I unistalled compiz. Then I get the message 'you don't appear to have a window manager installed' I reinstalled compiz, but it gives me a misty screen, with the cube desktop. How do I set compiz to a default setting? Plain and simple? Where is the config file? This may have started when I clicked a box 'enable indirect rendering' just to see what happened. I have an nvidia 9200 card on an Asus laptop.Failing that, how do I reinstall Fed 12 without wiping out my home directory?
I just bought a netbook, HP DV2-1039WM, which comes with Vista. I wiped the hard drive and installed Ubuntu 9.10. A problem has arisen in that it doesn't see any wireless card. There is a button on the side with an indicator light that is used to enable/disable wireless. The light is amber and, according to the manual, it is supposed to be blue when wireless is working. The manual just says "push the button" to turn it on, which doesn't do anything.
I recently installed a dual boot on my desktop with Windows 7/Ubuntu, which doesn't have any problems. Are there driver/hardware issues with the setup I am trying on this netbook? The HP website only has drivers for windows OSes listed. Theoretically, I could reinstall windows and/or do a dual-boot, but I'd rather just keep only Ubuntu on it if possible.
I did a fresh install of Ubuntu Karmic on a separate partition the other day, and mistakenly formatted the dedicated boot partition. This has left the boot entry in Fedora's fstab incorrect, and - obviously - removed the initrd and vmlinuz images for Fedora from the boot partition. Is there any way to reinstate these? Someone on the Ubuntu forums recommended chrooting into the Fedora partition, but I'm not sure I understand how that works. It's my own stupid fault for formatting the boot partition, but we live and learn!
I have a bootable flashdrive for the complete slackware distribution, and I want to install it on my dell dimension 2400, which has Windows XP and some useless files. I don't want to run Windows anymore on that PC, just Linux & Linux-based software. How do I get rid of what's on there now, including Windows, and at what stage?
I wrote a little python script for myself to use for wiping hard drives since I find myself doing it a lot lately, and I thought I'd share it with you guys. Here's the source code, just copy and paste it into a text file, mark it as executable and enjoy. Forums won't let me attach .py files.
Code: #!/usr/bin/env python #Killdisk 11.6.18 - June 18th 2011 #Author: Marcus Dean Adams (marcusdean.adams@gmail.com) #Imports OS functions
For example, I run a program called "luck" and it outputs a sentence like "good luck". Then "./luck -> logfile" will save the output content to logfile.But when I run another program called "hello" and it outputs a sentence lie " Hello world".Then "./hello-> logfile" will save the output content to logfile and wipe the previous contents.Is is possible to keep both sentences in the logfile? Just like
Tried to install Gnome after the minimal server (console based) install.I would like to install a graphical GUI now What to do? wich packages? tried zypper gnome-desktop (or something similar) but it wasn't enough.
If I install the factory release now, can I easily convert my system to a normal 11.3 point release later, after 11.3 is out? If so, how would I do it? (11.2 has an issue that affects me. It's fixed in 11.3 already, so I have to use 11.3 if I'm going to use openSUSE.)
In /var/log/warn I can see :Code:Jul 18 19:29:41 Linux1 SuSEfirewall2: Warning: config 'vsftpd' not available I did install vsftpd, but I removed it and install pure-ftpd instead.
i have a backtrack install that i would like to keep while installing suse for an everyday OS; i start the install process but when it gets to partitioning the hard drive, it doesnt seem to recognize anything already being on there; it just gives me the setup for suse, ie: sda1 ext3 = OS sda2 or sda5 = swap. do i have to configure a partition scheme? i installed ubuntu on a desktop alongside windows very easily due to grub graphical install/partition; is there not a similar function for suse?
I have an apparently stable installation of Xubuntu that I've hand-tweaked in a few ways. I'd like to be able to reinstall this system verbatim on this machine should a disk crash happen, etc.Is there a "standard" method to create an install and/or total-backup CD that would be an instantiation of the currently-installed-and-modified system?
I am installing Ubuntu Server 10.10 on and old Dell Laptop. The network connection is an Xircom PCMCIA card.During install, the computer sees and interacts via the network just fine. For example, I can ping the gateway. Also, the command "lspcmcia" works and show the Xircom card.When I reboot, however, there is no network access, and the "lspcmcia" command is not there. When I try "lspcmcia" the OS helpfully tells me that I can "apt-get" pcmciautils, but, without network access, that fails.I tried adding the install cdrom to apt using "apt-cdrom" and then tried to "apt-get" pcmciautils and it got further, installing some dependencies, but acted like it still was unable to locate the pcmciautils package.
Trying to install Ubuntu (tried several releases) on HP Pavillion Pentium 4 Proccessor 515 2.93 Gig 1M L2 cache 533mhz 90nm . Have 1 gig ram and 1Tb hd. Hangs on initial install screen for ever. Tried versions from 8.10 (origional disk) to 11.01. Machine works perfectly on Windows XP but who wants that? The model is pavillion 1000 system number pl397aa.
I downloaded Ubuntu and burned it to a CD-There was no problem with that part. It starts to install asks about the partition then the keyboard. Then it just stops and does nothing.
I'm an OpenSuse user wanting to try something different.Ubuntu Studios caught my attention. I had a brief play with an older version a while ago and liked whatI saw.Im having problems installing though.I've downloaded the 32bit version from the studio website link, and burnt the DVD.However the install always fails at the same stage: Select and install software.The error message is not specific, and no more information is given other than the step has failed.Any ideas what could be causing this? Ive tried to burn the DVD several times, on 2 different machines, but no luck so far.
Installing Ubuntu 10.10 desktop.on a Highpoint rocketraid 2642.Installing Ubuntu, it does not find the drive?How do I install the drivers to install and boot after the installation from the raid drives?
