6

We have recently upgraded a number of our servers. We are now left with a few servers we are ready to hand back to our data center.

Anyone know what is the best way to do a final self destruction of all the data on these servers before handing them back?

We obviously dont want to physically harm the servers, just purge, as permanently as possible all of our data on these boxes.

Improve this question
3
  • Belong on superuser but you can find utilities to zero write all the hard drives
    – Jesus Ramos
    Sep 20, 2011 at 5:24
  • 1
    Three votes to close as off-topic. Why? Isn't this part of a sysadmin's job? I've personally have to sanitise many hard drives as part of my duties.
    – John Gardeniers
    Sep 20, 2011 at 9:04
  • 1
    This seems like an appropriate question here (I run into this question several times a year in my job), and I don't see any good reasons why it was closed. Voting to reopen.
    – Stefan Lasiewski
    Sep 27, 2011 at 0:02

5 Answers 5

Reset to default
5

I endorse all the other recommendations for DBAN, but if you really can't do this, I've had a lot of success with shutting down as many services as I can (esp. the windowing system), then doing

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda bs=1000k

from a root shell prompt, sitting back, and waiting. This basically writes pseudorandom bytes, a megabyte at a time, all over /dev/sda (you may need to use /dev/hda or other device as appropriate to your setup).

Because the kernel and the tool are in-core, the system will stay up for a surprising amount of time while this is running, and it leaves an utterly unbootable and mostly-completely-scrambled system behind it.

Improve this answer
1
  • DBAN is the obvious choice when circumstances permit. Unfortunately not in our case. That is why I chose this as the best answer.
    – anonymous-one
    Sep 7, 2012 at 9:30
8

If you're interested in a bootable solution, I would suggest checking out DBAN

Improve this answer
1
  • nice tool! did not know about this. we wont be able to use this as getting them to burn this, boot it for us, etc, will be a headache. but will definatly keep this in mind for the future! thanx.
    – anonymous-one
    Sep 20, 2011 at 5:33
6

Do you have (remote) access to server console before booting? You can add DBAN to grub.conf and run it from grub menu (use kernel=dban.bzi with dban.bzi copied from downloaded ISO file).

Wiping disk from under running system isn't reliable - you can never know if system wouldn't crash in the middle leaving you with an unbootable and unaccessible, but not quite cleared system.

Improve this answer
3
  • 1
    +1 Elegant! I didn't know one could do that.
    – MadHatter
    Sep 20, 2011 at 6:53
  • Perhaps you could even set DBAN as the default boot image. I'm not sure if it can be made to wipe a drive or set of drives without human intervention, but if it can (through boot command line parameters) then that may be a workable approach.
    – user
    Sep 20, 2011 at 7:54
  • 1
    @Michael Kjörling: You can with kernel=dban.bzi nuke="dwipe --autonuke" but you'll have no confirmation of successful wipe and you'll have only one try — you wouldn't be able to boot back to system even if it was not properly wiped.
    – Tometzky
    Sep 20, 2011 at 9:03
4

You should use the shred program from GNU coreutils.

One thing I've found to be useful, if you want to avoid "cutting the branch you're sitting on", is to create an initramfs image that includes shred, then burn that onto a bootable CD.

Improve this answer
2
  • i will look into using this + find to exec shred on all important components of the servers.
    – anonymous-one
    Sep 20, 2011 at 5:34
  • 1
    I like that analogy: "cutting the branch you're sitting on"!
    – Austin ''Danger'' Powers
    Apr 5, 2013 at 18:03
4

If you're really worried about it, simply have them ship you the physical hard drives, then destroy them yourselves.

Improve this answer
2
  • agreed. and take note of the serials numbers before and after to make sure its the same drives :)
    – Sirex
    Sep 20, 2011 at 6:56
  • 1
    @Sirex, and the SMART diagnostic power-on-time values!
    – bdonlan
    Sep 20, 2011 at 18:18

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .