[Request] Batch option to wipe drives and remove wipe button from "View Disks" tab.

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Cordel

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Okay so I had to actually wipe my first drives in FN, and I started thinking, I know I probably should do that but here it is. :p

It would be really nice to have the ability to select multiple drives to be wiped and have the status go to a ajax/json frame next to the console messages in the footer of pending and processing items which might be useful else where as well later down the road and allow the ability to use the web interface while those jobs are processing.
Also the option to do a DoD 5220.22-M type wipe as an option would be simply delightful.

The other point is that the View Disk tab/screen does not display in the table if the disk is part of a zvol. Kind of spooky to have a wipe button in the current table. So maybe another tab explicitly for the function of wiping drives. Then for the really paranoid that do not like to wipe drives on a production system, a check box under Settings/Advanced to enable/disable access to this tab.

I do know that DBAN harddisk eraser www.dban.org is always an option, though I don't do this at home enough to set up a single machine just for this function.

Also instead of a single click option, it could pop up a request for the admin password with a flashing bold red caption stating that you are about to wipe the following table of drives and will forever lose your data. I think that a single click option is dangerous. The selection screen could be made where it would only list drives that are not part of a zvol/aggregate though so your not looking at a screen of all the drives in the system to select from which would be better than the view disks screen currently used that don't even tell you if the disk is part of a set or not. This could be later extended so that as each volume goes offline a check is run to insure the offlined drive has not caused a degraded set, or halt the process though this should be barley trivial as there should already be a table of drives that are in use as a data set and never show in the selection table in the first place.

Let me know if this sounds fiesible and I'll add the request and detail to the bug tracker.

Regards.
 

cyberjock

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There are lots of ways you could wipe a drive if you needed to. As I type this I am using a Parted Magic USB key and a SATA->USB connected to zero out 2 disks. I'm using a spare computer that's from circa-2006 and I didn't even have to open the case. There's SO many ways that wiping could be accomplished do we really need another one?

To be completely honest, the DOD wipe is a bit over-hyped. When I did DOD classified work in 2003-2006 you had to use one of the certified applications and it would give you a log certifying the exact drive serial number, model and type of wipe used. If you lost the log you had to redo the wipe. FreeNAS will never be certified(cost is about $100k and there's no guarantee your app will pass, there are strict controls required). Additionally, DOD policy is that no media that previously had anything above unclassified data on it can ever be released even after a wipe with BCWipe or DBAN(those were the only 2 approved applications then and afaik are still the only ones). Needless to say the facilities that had classified data had LOTS of spare drives because they could never be given away to other facilities, only destroyed. The unclassified facilities were always short on spare drives because they could be easily sold and there were alot more machines that needed new hard disks regularly.

Aside from the DOD wipe, even a single pass of zeros or random data is enough to make recovery all but impossible. Unless you are a government agency with an electron microscope recovery is statistically unlikely. Even then, there's only anecdotal evidence that it is even possible to recover data via any means once the data has been overwritten once. There is no evidence that any data has ever been recovered from any media after it has been physically overwritten even once.

There was a company around 2008 that had commented about recovering data after it has been overwritten and said that it's literally impossible. The random domains that did not get switched during the writing process are few and figuring out which one is "correct" is impossible. One other manufacturer, I think it was Seagate, had said that the DOD wipe could be damaging to disk because of the constant writing for 7(or 31 passes)

FreeNAS was really built to be a file server. Personally, I'm not sure if it's really a feature that time should be spent to implement. It's kind of outside the services a "file server" would use regularly. Of course, nothing is stopping you from doing a DD wipe from a console. A small script could be made and run on the applicable /devs if REALLY desired. With the number of ways people have been losing data due to ignorance of how ZFS and FreeNAS work I'm hesitant to give them a "push button" to erase data. ;)

I'm sure if you manage to implement it yourself you could probably put in a ticket and see it in the nightly build within a few days. If you provide the code the developers usually review it and approve it within 3 days! I've done it :D
 

ProtoSD

MVP
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FreeNAS has a disk wipe feature in the GUI now, it's just not batch oriented.

Of course, nothing is stopping you from doing a DD wipe from a console.

This is exactly how the GUI does it with more precise parameters.
 

Cordel

Dabbler
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Aug 18, 2012
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I'm not looking for nor expect a certified DOD wipe, only for the option to zero and follow with random bits for maybe two cycles at most as an option. FN could call it something else other than DOD. Call it a FN paranoid wipe. ;)

Batch orientated is more what I'm truly interested in.
Also the Disk View page don't show if a drive is in an active pool of disks. I believe moving the wipe option to it's own page where only un-configured drives show in a table would be more intuitive and complement a batch wipe of disks, while also reduce the possibility of wiping a disk that someone might not intend too should they be rushed and not paying attention. I know that never happens right? :rolleyes:

At work we have a machine that wipes the drive followed by punching a big hole in it… Thats DOD certified in my book. :D
 

Cordel

Dabbler
Joined
Aug 18, 2012
Messages
22
I would think that at the very least, if anyone gets any one thing out of this, would be at least disable the ability to click the existing wipe buttons for active drives. Then set them to enabled once the drive is not actively part of a pool. Else some way to better identify what drive you are about to wipe besides checking to see what the serial number is on the drive from one page to another page (i.e. Volume status page and View Disks page).

I'd program it and send patches if I could, but I know nothing of the framework FN is using for the web pages. I'm more a core and package guy.
 

Chris Moore

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Batch orientated is more what I'm truly interested in.
I know it is an old thread, but I ran across this and it inspired me. I think you should put in a feature request. I have occasionally needed to clear a whole group of drives at once and this would be a nice convenience. Since they already have a button to do one drive, it should be pretty trivial to add a way to do a group of drives.
At work we have a machine that wipes the drive followed by punching a big hole in it… Thats DOD certified in my book.
We do that with all drives that are being retired. We can reuse them internally in the organization, but they never go anywhere else without being physically damaged beyond the point of data recovery.
 
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