December 2005
Beginner
480 pages
13h 27m
English
Content preview from Linux Server Hacks, Volume TwoBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Hack #99. Permanently Erase Hard Disks
Before discarding old hardware, make sure you're not accidentally giving away proprietary or personal data.
Most government agencies—certainly the ones with three-letter names—have extremely stringent requirements for wiping hard drives before they discard old computing equipment. These requirements usually also extend to any contractors who have done work for them. Some security requirements are so stringent that disks must be destroyed, rather than simply erased, before the hardware can be discarded. The quickest and easiest way to do this (and the mechanism preferred by more militant sysadmins) is to take the disks in question to the local shooting gallery (guns, that is) and put a few rounds through them. For information on how to totally disable a disk using this mechanism, check out a recent copy of Field & Stream. However, if you prefer to erase a disk using software, read on.
Tip
Lest you think that finding embarrassing data on hard drives is simply anecdotal, I have some good experience with this myself. I collect old workstations, and I once bought an ancient, still-working Tektronix Unix system that I managed to hack into since I didn't have the install media for uTek. Once in, I did a bit of exploring and found that the system had apparently last been used as a node in a Bondage and Domination BBS. Now that was some interesting (and scary) mail!
Using shred to Wipe Hard Drives
"Permanently Delete Files" [Hack #98] introduced the ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.