Re: [Linux-users] PATA drives - 80/40G
Does it have to be PC/i386 stuff? I'll be helping a firm pull out some old DEC hardware next month.. Serious big-iron they are going to have to pay to get taken away if you're really keen. It's not been powered on since about 1990, and you'll need a truck. :-) On 17/08/15 18:57, Peter Simmonds wrote: Hi Chris Others, I know what it's like. Would you mind keeping an eye out for exotic hardware, before it goes to molten media? They tend not to know much about what they are scrapping. ___ Linux-users mailing list Linux-users@lists.canterbury.ac.nz http://lists.canterbury.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: [Linux-users] PATA drives - 80/40G
On Mon 17 Aug 2015 20:07:20 NZST +1200, criggie wrote: With all respect to Molten Media, if anyone's giving away drives do make sure they're wiped first, with something like dban rather than a casual wipe in $OS. dban? dd is as good as it gets. Paranoia is a good thing. Ha. Just came from a Christchurch Robotics meeting. They all laugh about privacy, and the power companies collecting power use data from everyone with at least 30min resolution. What problem. Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann http://volker.top.geek.nz/ Please do not CC list postings to me. ___ Linux-users mailing list Linux-users@lists.canterbury.ac.nz http://lists.canterbury.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: [Linux-users] PATA drives - 80/40G
scrub does it for me, not heard of dban before, will 'ave to have a look... Anyway, spare drives I have, first in first served: PATA: 1x WD400, 40G 2x Maxtor 20.4Gb (20G? is that even a thing? :) ) 1x Hitachi Deskstar 82.3Gb SATA: (Turns out two were not as old as the others!) 1x Hitachi 80G 1x WD400 40G They will be scrubbed before I bring them into town, which might take a day or three as I'll leave them running on a USB adaptor... Cheers, Chris H. On 17/08/15 20:07, criggie wrote: On 17/08/15 12:00, linux-users-requ...@lists.canterbury.ac.nz wrote: I go through a cylic thing where I collect parts from upgrades/repairs for customers and think 'that'll come in handy' and then after a few months realise I've collected a pile of junk that I drop off at Molten Media.. I thought I'd offer the drives up for free here first as I know there are some tinkerers on the list... With all respect to Molten Media, if anyone's giving away drives do make sure they're wiped first, with something like dban rather than a casual wipe in $OS. Paranoia is a good thing. ___ Linux-users mailing list Linux-users@lists.canterbury.ac.nz http://lists.canterbury.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: [Linux-users] email server; of sorts
On Fri, 2015-08-14 at 15:27 +1200, Jim Cheetham wrote: On Fri, Aug 14, 2015 at 3:26 PM, Adrian Mageanu adrian.mage...@totalimex.com wrote: Errr, scratch that, I found they invented google. Sure, but if you don't know the right words to use to describe your problem, you won't be able to find the best technical detail :-) -jim So true, I spent a silly amount of time looking for something like kerio in the FOSS world - that server does all I want and some, but it's not FOSS and the price is prohibitive for personal use. At some stage I started playing with Zimbra, but there I had the same problem I'm trying to avoid with this setup, meaning that for an IMAP account I couldn't find a way to keep a local copy of a message after it was deleted from the server. Glad you ignored this message. I started working on this, I'll post the configuration when I finish. Or ask for some more directions if I get stuck. Adrian ___ Linux-users mailing list Linux-users@lists.canterbury.ac.nz http://lists.canterbury.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: [Linux-users] Data security and privacy (Re: PATA drives - 80/40G)
On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 11:30 PM, Helmut Walle helmut.wa...@gmail.com wrote: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx ... If you want better security use /dev/urandom instead of /dev/zero, however take into account that this can be slower as it does require some CPU work, whereas /dev/zero produces the zero bytes with very little CPU involvement and thus is noticeably faster, particularly on old hardware. Security convenience (speed) rarely go together :-) Blasting zeros onto the disk is nice, because you can easily tell later on if it worked. If you put random data on there you might not be able to confirm it was a successful write! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_remanence discusses the problem quite well, and while there are various organisations that publish standards requiring multiple passes with differing data patterns, there don't seem to be any successful reconstructions from the simpler delete. https://kromey.us/2013/04/the-myth-of-data-remanence-484.html The more complex overwrite/delete cycles are a handy workout for the drive, however; if you have time, running multiple passes of dban on the disk both destroys any data on there, and confirms that there are no terminal bad blocks :-) which is a nice extra. -jim ___ Linux-users mailing list Linux-users@lists.canterbury.ac.nz http://lists.canterbury.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: [Linux-users] Data security and privacy (Re: PATA drives - 80/40G)
On 18 August 2015 at 14:21, Adrian Mageanu adrian.mage...@totalimex.com wrote: I can't remember where I read but there are ways to retrieve data after a dd fill with zeroes or something else by using photorec and some hardware forensic techniques. The only downside with dban and nwipe is that for relatively recent large HDDs it takes ages to finish. A while back I gave away 2x400GB SATA2 disks and one disk took 37 hours to wipe with dban. If you're paranoid, I'd be spending more time getting past the hard-drive firmware and getting into the protected regions, and the bad blocks that the drive silently reallocated away from you, and making sure they're zeroed out as well. Those blocks, if any of them exist, will not only contain entire sectors of your data, but they will contain enough of your data that the error correcting codes are still sufficient for the hard drive firmware to have transparently hidden the fact it saw a bad bit or two, and silently copied that data to a new place and pretended it never happened. http://superuser.com/a/688764 And there's always firmware caches as well that might have bits of data in them to be concerned about. -- Kent KENTNL - https://metacpan.org/author/KENTNL ___ Linux-users mailing list Linux-users@lists.canterbury.ac.nz http://lists.canterbury.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: [Linux-users] Data security and privacy (Re: PATA drives - 80/40G)
On Tue, 2015-08-18 at 11:50 +1000, Fraser McGlinn wrote: On 17/08/15 21:30, Helmut Walle wrote: And yes, for wiping disks something like dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx does the job (obviously replacing 'x' with the letter for the drive to be wiped). Without any further arguments, this will eventually fill the disk and terminate when running out of space. You can give is a block size bs=... and count=... to exactly fill the disk. I definately agree with Criggie on this - You need to be a bit more diligent in wiping your data. I prefer DBAN as well. If its an old drive such as a PATA drive which will have no foreseeable use, i'd probably demantile it and use the platters as coasters too. Also to grab the magnets as a fiddle toy. We should be taking data security seriously since even stuff such as SSH private keys, SSL private keys, DNS DNSSEC keys etc, are definitely sensitive and can be used for years without rolling them to new ones. But at the end of the day, each to their own. I can't force others to take data security seriously. ___ +1 for dban. nwipe can also do the job and is included in most distros, no need for a separate boot I can't remember where I read but there are ways to retrieve data after a dd fill with zeroes or something else by using photorec and some hardware forensic techniques. The only downside with dban and nwipe is that for relatively recent large HDDs it takes ages to finish. A while back I gave away 2x400GB SATA2 disks and one disk took 37 hours to wipe with dban. Adrian ___ Linux-users mailing list Linux-users@lists.canterbury.ac.nz http://lists.canterbury.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: [Linux-users] PATA drives - 80/40G
I have an old compac rack server sitting in the garage dual power supply one cpu though don't know the specs but it is old On 17 August 2015 at 18:57, Peter Simmonds peter.a.simmo...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Chris Others, I know what it's like. Would you mind keeping an eye out for exotic hardware, before it goes to molten media? They tend not to know much about what they are scrapping. As an example, I recently pulled an ordinary looking ISA card from an absolutely shagged old 386. This card was the basis for downloading data from a portable ECG monitor (as used in ambulances) into a computer. Without it the heartbeat waveform was only 8 pixels high on the LCD screen the units have. Would have otherwise taken months to reverse-engineer the communication these devices were using. Now I can just buy a PC104 motherboard from ebay, install the operating system and hard-wire the card straight on to it! Do let me (us?) know if anything exotic turns up, as the hardware is needed to create drivers, which in turn could possibly end up in the linux kernal! Cheers, Peter On 17/08/2015 11:55, Chris Hellyar wrote: Hi Peter, They are fine for legacy machines, but I've got a lot of spare junk and I want the space back. :-) I go through a cylic thing where I collect parts from upgrades/repairs for customers and think 'that'll come in handy' and then after a few months realise I've collected a pile of junk that I drop off at Molten Media.. I thought I'd offer the drives up for free here first as I know there are some tinkerers on the list... I'll go through em tonight and reply with a list of the sizes.. There were some 40's and at least one 80 in there, and I think a 100 but I wasn't paying that much attention to be honest... If it wasn't 400G+ it went on the 'out' pile... Cheers, Chris H. -Original Message- From: Peter Simmonds peter.a.simmo...@gmail.com peter.a.simmo...@gmail.com Hi Chris Others, I think these may be useful when formatted with FAT32 and maybe on a USB2 to PATA adapter. I have tried on many occasions to get various livecd distributions to work on various hard drives. They always seem to require FAT32, and frequently fail due to some other factor (I'm guessing the USB-PATA bridge). Perhaps the lower CHS count on these drives may improve compatibility? Have seen W98SE2 running on an 80Gb drive myself. I also suspect there is some extension to FAT32 used by default at least in windoze that would seem to create incompatibilities with creating bootable live CD distros. Hopefully someone else on the mailing list will be able to give better advice... In any case, I could do with a few of these myself, to upgrade some legacy systems. Cheers, Peter ___ Linux-users mailing listlinux-us...@lists.canterbury.ac.nzhttp://lists.canterbury.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/linux-users ___ Linux-users mailing list Linux-users@lists.canterbury.ac.nz http://lists.canterbury.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/linux-users -- Regards Bevan Linux Aficionado and Arch Linux fanboy In a world without fences and walls, who needs Gates and Windows? ___ Linux-users mailing list Linux-users@lists.canterbury.ac.nz http://lists.canterbury.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: [Linux-users] PATA drives - 80/40G
Hi Chris Others, I know what it's like. Would you mind keeping an eye out for exotic hardware, before it goes to molten media? They tend not to know much about what they are scrapping. As an example, I recently pulled an ordinary looking ISA card from an absolutely shagged old 386. This card was the basis for downloading data from a portable ECG monitor (as used in ambulances) into a computer. Without it the heartbeat waveform was only 8 pixels high on the LCD screen the units have. Would have otherwise taken months to reverse-engineer the communication these devices were using. Now I can just buy a PC104 motherboard from ebay, install the operating system and hard-wire the card straight on to it! Do let me (us?) know if anything exotic turns up, as the hardware is needed to create drivers, which in turn could possibly end up in the linux kernal! Cheers, Peter On 17/08/2015 11:55, Chris Hellyar wrote: Hi Peter, They are fine for legacy machines, but I've got a lot of spare junk and I want the space back. :-) I go through a cylic thing where I collect parts from upgrades/repairs for customers and think 'that'll come in handy' and then after a few months realise I've collected a pile of junk that I drop off at Molten Media.. I thought I'd offer the drives up for free here first as I know there are some tinkerers on the list... I'll go through em tonight and reply with a list of the sizes.. There were some 40's and at least one 80 in there, and I think a 100 but I wasn't paying that much attention to be honest... If it wasn't 400G+ it went on the 'out' pile... Cheers, Chris H. -Original Message- From: Peter Simmonds peter.a.simmo...@gmail.com Hi Chris Others, I think these may be useful when formatted with FAT32 and maybe on a USB2 to PATA adapter. I have tried on many occasions to get various livecd distributions to work on various hard drives. They always seem to require FAT32, and frequently fail due to some other factor (I'm guessing the USB-PATA bridge). Perhaps the lower CHS count on these drives may improve compatibility? Have seen W98SE2 running on an 80Gb drive myself. I also suspect there is some extension to FAT32 used by default at least in windoze that would seem to create incompatibilities with creating bootable live CD distros. Hopefully someone else on the mailing list will be able to give better advice... In any case, I could do with a few of these myself, to upgrade some legacy systems. Cheers, Peter ___ Linux-users mailing list Linux-users@lists.canterbury.ac.nz http://lists.canterbury.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/linux-users ___ Linux-users mailing list Linux-users@lists.canterbury.ac.nz http://lists.canterbury.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: [Linux-users] PATA drives - 80/40G
On 17/08/15 20:11, linux-users-requ...@lists.canterbury.ac.nz wrote: I have an old compac rack server sitting in the garage dual power supply one cpu though don't know the specs but it is old Given Compaq stopped making servers at least 15 years ago, that box will be a p3 xeon with maybe a couple hundred MB of ram, if it Practically, no use. Not really old or rare enough to be in a museum, although Pleasent Point Railway Museum might be interested, whereas Ferrymead is quite space-constrained. And it'll likely use a heap more power than any modern box, if you wanted to run it as a quirky device. So its really only useful as art, or perhaps a bookend, or a leg for a workbench. Sorry. -- Criggie http://criggie.org.nz/ ___ Linux-users mailing list Linux-users@lists.canterbury.ac.nz http://lists.canterbury.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
