Open phillxnet opened 7 years ago
Hooverdan96
commented
9 months ago Considering the warnings in the above (now obsoleted) wiki entry and the disclaimers in this tutorial https://grok.lsu.edu/article.aspx?articleid=16716, if we choose to do it, it definitely has to be "ironclad" as not to brick any drives configurations.
phillxnet
commented
9 months ago @Hooverdan96 That's a nice tutorial. It does look like, from the extra info there re frozen state etc, we have some interim steps to take first: i.e. surfacing a frozen drive state within the Web-UI for example. And establishing if this facility is even supported, with again a Web-UI surfacing element. We can then build on those to offer (with warnings) the option on suspected compatible devices.
We have some updated still relevant info here still. Leaving open as drive maintenance feature request for now.
It is proposed that in addition to our existing 'wipe' option, presented for unassigned devices on their respective role/wipe/LUKS page that we also provide a Web-UI interface to perform a secure erase via hdparm. As this process can take hours it would have to be treated in a similar way to how scrubs / balances are currently done, ie task threads. And as this always pertains to the whole disk the link to the specified info / execution / in-progress page could be made from the disk page via a new icon against the drive itself. This would only be shown when the drive has no partitions and no whole disk file system, such as when it has already been wiped, ie presented along side our existing ? icon. The secure wipe info /execution / in-progress page could also contain a link back to the regular role/wipe/LUKS page advising that method in used unless the user specifically requires the enhanced facility of the secure wipe. The user test must also stress that the process is very time consuming and that the drive will be unavailable during the wipe process. The mechanism to block the use of in-process secure wipe drives from taking part as pool members must also be established, ie either a temporary disk role which already works on a white list basis, or hooks into the secure wipe tasks.
Provision would have to be made to indicate an ongoing secure wipe on the disk page, maybe as an additional 'secure wipe in progress' icon; informed by any currently running secure wipe tasks.
The utility for this facility is it's attention to re-mapped 'bad' sectors etc which are not normally addressed by regular block level wipe systems and potential use in de/re-commissioning drives that were not previously LUKS formatted.
The following contains info on hdparm's ability to initiate and monitor drives build in secure wipe capability:
https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase
Note that not all drives have this capability however, but this could be probed and presented on presentation of the secure wipe info / execution / in-progress page.
Do to the long running nature and requirement during development to test on various hardware this is not a trivial feature and may be considered outside the realm of Rockstor.
Submitting as a 'Ready for Comment' proposed addition.