Solaris

Hi Guys

I'm new here in these forums and also in Sun Solaris/Sun hardware related things.

I have some really basic questions about the way to go for "wipe" a Sun Solaris system.

I have to sell a used Sunfire v480 and I wan't to wipe the old sytem before selling it. But I'm not sure if I can just erase/wipe all the partitions on the disk. Are there any special partition/settings that shouldn't be erased?

I visited the Sun Links on the top of this forum. But the Sun Forum seems to be down/broken atm. Someone knows any other good support site for Sun Server related questions? Well I'm allready stuck on how to boot a Sunfire from cd-rom drive Or is there an irc-channel for such things where I can get some really basic support?

greets Slowatsch

there are a few ways to wipe the disk. if you are reselling the box with hard drives, i would definitely clear your data from the drives including all partitions. the buying party will be able to format the disk as needed.

please note that you should always boot off media (cdrom) before running these on the disk that holds the root partition.

ideally you will want to boot off media whenever doing this but not necessarily.

boot off media at the ok prompt or obp:

Code:

{0} boot cdrom

there are several scripts out on the net that can help you but the general idea is to use format. type `format` and then select your disk(s). from there, you will type analyze and see several options. look for any of these:

Code:

        write    - write then read      (corrupts data)
        compare  - write, read, compare (corrupts data)
        purge    - write, read, write   (corrupts data)
        verify   - write entire disk, then verify (corrupts data)

by issuing any of these commands, you will (as it says) corrupt the data. may scripts will have you run each of these sequentially as they finish. this is the most time consuming way to kill your disks but one of the better ways without using an external machine/tool. depending on drive, this can take more then a day.

the other way is to write all zero's to your disk(s). you would issue something like:

Code:

dd if=/dev/zero /dev/rdsk/cXtXdXsX

where `cXtXdXsX` is your target disk and `sX` is your backup tag'ed slice (usually 2 or 7). again, you can find the disk you would like to target by issuing format.

good luck.

Or what you can do is

Code:

fmthard -s /dev/null /dev/rdsk/cXtXdXs2

note this doesn't really destroy your data, but it clears the VTOC. The only way to redeem your data is to get your exact VTOC back. The buying party will not know your VTOC unless you give it to them.

Thank you really much for your help. Well my first thought was to boot from a external CD and run a program like dban (Darkis Boot and Nuke). Is there any advantage of the format / fmthard commands?


ps. whould be nice to have a command like "selfdestruct" :P

Update:

Well I tried to boot from CD now and I'm stuck on booting it. Yes I read the threads but somehow I didn't found my case.

I have the cdrom on the ide slot. Probe-ide shows:
The disks are on the scsi bus.

I tryed to boot the system with "boot cdrom"
Error:
I read the last thread about it and tryed to find it in the OS... but well I somehow failed.

Format shows:
ls /dev/dsk/ :
But I can't find the right device in /dev/rdsk/... I tried ct0d0s6 but no success.

It's a burned CD, but I also tried it with a DVD and a pressed CD. Always no success.

Well I need a way to wipe this machine soon, because I should sell it asap

But there is no way without CD right?

I don't really know why the CD is not working, try the same CD with other machine and see.


there is plenty of ways, now put the boot disk aside, you can wipe the other disk safely. The boot disk, you can use the commands but you will not longer be able to access ur system. be careful, if you wiped the boot disk you wont be able to boot to your system anymore.

thats the idea. hes trying to resell the box.


anyway, the cd/dvd may not be bootable. mounting the cdrom won't really help you as the cd/dvd needs to be bootable. however, you can always find your cd/dvdrom via

Code:

iostat -En

you can also use volcheck to make sure the cdrom is reading the cd/dvd.

Code:

volcheck -v /dev/dsk/c* | grep "has media"