Cristian Rodríguez wrote:

On 17/09/12 20:58, Greg Freemyer wrote:

...

Does opensuse have a file wiping tool that attempts to sanitize any of the above?

No, the only "solution" for that is media destruction. (i.e a hammer)

Pedantic nitpick with the English, well Latin actually. That 'i.e' should be 'e.g.'. Much as I enjoyed smashing a couple of old disks with my sledgehammer last weekend, I'm looking forward to using a blowtorch next time (since I don't have a blast furnace at home) :) Mind you, that makes WEEE compliance much more difficult! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 18/09/12 11:40, Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

On Tue, 2012-09-18 at 11:15 +0100, Dave Howorth wrote:

...

Cristian Rodríguez wrote:

...

On 17/09/12 20:58, Greg Freemyer wrote:

...

Does opensuse have a file wiping tool that attempts to sanitize any of the above?

No, the only "solution" for that is media destruction. (i.e a hammer)

Pedantic nitpick with the English, well Latin actually. That 'i.e' should be 'e.g.'.

I will nit pick one further. There are spaces between the abbreviated words (as between all words), and a comma after the two abbreviated words, i. e., "e. g., "

Source: Publication Guide of the American Psychological Society, who are rather pedantic on these issues. I suspect similar publishing guidelines would suggest similar usage. Even LibreOffice gets this correct in the spell checker. Will wonders ever cease?

British English usage would omit the space and possibly the middle full stop: e.g., eg. Dylan -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Roger Oberholtzer said the following on 09/18/2012 06:40 AM:

I will nit pick one further. There are spaces between the abbreviated words (as between all words), and a comma after the two abbreviated words, i. e., "e. g., "

Fowler points out that the following comma "is nether necessary not wrong". Partridge on "Abusage" has nothing to say. "Webster's Dictionary of English Usage" begins by pointing out that "i.e." and "e.g." are often confused with each other in use and reference. Both are abbreviations and the normal usage is to have a period after each abbreviated word. "I.e." is an abbreviation for /id est/, and that being two word one would expect a space as in "i. e.". My Chicago manual of Style has an extensive section on the correct form of abbreviations covering everything from "Mr. & Mrs." to scientific units, and prefers "i.e.," and "e.g.,". All that being said in most usage - including Fowler and Webster's - seems, rightly or wrongly, to prefer "e.g.," and "i.e.,". -- HTTP is like being married: you have to be able to handle whatever you're given, while being very careful what you send back. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On Tue, 2012-09-18 at 14:34 +0200, Sven Burmeister wrote:

Am Dienstag, 18. September 2012, 08:19:34 schrieb Anton Aylward:

...

All that being said in most usage - including Fowler and Webster's - seems, rightly or wrongly, to prefer "e.g.," and "i.e.,".

In German abbreviations etc. are/can be separated with a thin space. Yet since there is no key for that on a keyboard only professional layouts have it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_space

I suspect this is the case with i.<ts>e., (the new text representation I will now champion) and friends. I wonder how easiest to get thin spaces in to documents so I can create new adventures in desktop publishing... Yours sincerely, Roger Oberholtzer Ramböll RST / Systems Office: Int +46 10-615 60 20 Mobile: Int +46 70-815 1696 roger.oberholtzer@ramboll.se ________________________________________ Ramböll Sverige AB Krukmakargatan 21 P.O. Box 17009 SE-104 62 Stockholm, Sweden www.rambollrst.se -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 09/18/2012 08:24 PM, Jeffrey L. Taylor wrote:

On the other hand, "A Manual of Style" by University of Chicago Press, another frequently used reference does not put spaces in these abbreviations. Given that this is not a scholarly publication of either persuasion, this nitpicking is perhaps too nit picky. IMHO, of course.

I thought nit picking, by definition, had to be, well, nit picking. My response was really meant in humor. I am stuck writing sales brochures, which can drive anyone over the edge. I needed a distraction. Mission accomplished. Or, as I would have said back in the days when I lived at home, "He started it!". And my brother usually did. Really. Humor. At least to me... But I did learn about thin spaces. Anyone know Stephen Fry's e-mail address? I would trust his opinion on all this. -- Roger Oberholtzer -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 11:32 AM, Jim Flanagan wrote:

On 9/17/12 6:58 PM, Greg Freemyer wrote:

...

All,

I was just thinking about file wiping tools in opensuse.

In general file wiping tools are used if you have an important file you want to wipe (overwrite) before deleting.

In the distro we have shred and wipe that do this, and in OBS we have srm and secure-delete (10 years old).

It is clearly an issue that people are concerned about, but none of them seem to even try to address:

- file remnants which maybe in the filesystem journal - backup copies of the files in snapshots (LVM, btrfs, ext4 snapshots) - wiping of unallocated space to overwrite earlier drafts which may have been deleted but are still in unallocated - SSDs and there potential for sector remapping during the write operation. - the swap partition can hold copies of data that is unencrypted in ram

I realize a none of the above are trivial, but it seems they should make some effort to at least warn the user of the issues.

Does opensuse have a file wiping tool that attempts to sanitize any of the above?

If so, I'd like to create a simple wiki page that covers this topic. At present it seems the page will mostly discuss issues, and not have much in the way of solutions.

Greg

I don't know about a tool, but I think writing random data to a drive should do the trick. Once, or maybe a couple of times.

I saw this in an article yesterday, not related to wiping per se, but should work.

-----

dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda – Writes Junk Onto a Hard Drive

That is obviously designed to wipe an entire drive, not spot clean a single file like srm, shred, and wipe can in theory do. fyi: That will also abort on a write error. Not very cool if you want to ensure you're actually wiping the full drive. Greg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On Tue, 2012-09-25 at 16:03 -0400, Amaury Viera Hernández wrote:

Hello, I need one or more reliable applications, capable of measuring latency, packet loss, bandwidth and more on the network,

We use ZenOSS for all network management and data recording stuff. http://www.zenoss.com/ Easy to use and little to no crawling through retarded config files [this is 2012!].

On 9/25/12 2:55 PM, Greg Freemyer wrote:

On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 11:32 AM, Jim Flanagan wrote:

...

On 9/17/12 6:58 PM, Greg Freemyer wrote:

...

All,

I was just thinking about file wiping tools in opensuse.

In general file wiping tools are used if you have an important file you want to wipe (overwrite) before deleting.

In the distro we have shred and wipe that do this, and in OBS we have srm and secure-delete (10 years old).

It is clearly an issue that people are concerned about, but none of them seem to even try to address:

- file remnants which maybe in the filesystem journal - backup copies of the files in snapshots (LVM, btrfs, ext4 snapshots) - wiping of unallocated space to overwrite earlier drafts which may have been deleted but are still in unallocated - SSDs and there potential for sector remapping during the write operation. - the swap partition can hold copies of data that is unencrypted in ram

I realize a none of the above are trivial, but it seems they should make some effort to at least warn the user of the issues.

Does opensuse have a file wiping tool that attempts to sanitize any of the above?

If so, I'd like to create a simple wiki page that covers this topic. At present it seems the page will mostly discuss issues, and not have much in the way of solutions.

Greg

I don't know about a tool, but I think writing random data to a drive should do the trick. Once, or maybe a couple of times.

I saw this in an article yesterday, not related to wiping per se, but should work.

-----

dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda – Writes Junk Onto a Hard Drive

That is obviously designed to wipe an entire drive, not spot clean a single file like srm, shred, and wipe can in theory do.

OK, I see more what you are looking for now. Wipe a singe file or directory. Hum. No sure about how Linux handles things, but on Windows, there are LOTS of remnants left over just by viewing a file. Delete and wipe a single file, and there are lots of places in Windows you can see what was opened, and some or all of what was in that file. All over the place. Perhaps Linux is not so sloppy (for lack of a better word). The only way I can see to get around this is whole drive encryption. With, or course, a very good password. The remnants would still be there but encrypted from prying eyes.

fyi: That will also abort on a write error. Not very cool if you want to ensure you're actually wiping the full drive.

I didn't realize it would abort on error. Definitely not optimal. Is there a command to add to force continue? Jim F -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 9/26/12 11:35 AM, Greg Freemyer wrote:

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 11:06 AM, Jim Flanagan wrote:

...

On 9/25/12 2:55 PM, Greg Freemyer wrote:

...

On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 11:32 AM, Jim Flanagan wrote:

...

On 9/17/12 6:58 PM, Greg Freemyer wrote:

...

All,

I was just thinking about file wiping tools in opensuse.

In general file wiping tools are used if you have an important file you want to wipe (overwrite) before deleting.

In the distro we have shred and wipe that do this, and in OBS we have srm and secure-delete (10 years old).

It is clearly an issue that people are concerned about, but none of them seem to even try to address:

- file remnants which maybe in the filesystem journal - backup copies of the files in snapshots (LVM, btrfs, ext4 snapshots) - wiping of unallocated space to overwrite earlier drafts which may have been deleted but are still in unallocated - SSDs and there potential for sector remapping during the write operation. - the swap partition can hold copies of data that is unencrypted in ram

I realize a none of the above are trivial, but it seems they should make some effort to at least warn the user of the issues.

Does opensuse have a file wiping tool that attempts to sanitize any of the above?

If so, I'd like to create a simple wiki page that covers this topic. At present it seems the page will mostly discuss issues, and not have much in the way of solutions.

Greg

I don't know about a tool, but I think writing random data to a drive should do the trick. Once, or maybe a couple of times.

I saw this in an article yesterday, not related to wiping per se, but should work.

-----

dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda – Writes Junk Onto a Hard Drive

That is obviously designed to wipe an entire drive, not spot clean a single file like srm, shred, and wipe can in theory do.

OK, I see more what you are looking for now. Wipe a singe file or directory. Hum. No sure about how Linux handles things, but on Windows, there are LOTS of remnants left over just by viewing a file. Delete and wipe a single file, and there are lots of places in Windows you can see what was opened, and some or all of what was in that file. All over the place. Perhaps Linux is not so sloppy (for lack of a better word). The only way I can see to get around this is whole drive encryption. With, or course, a very good password. The remnants would still be there but encrypted from prying eyes.

...

fyi: That will also abort on a write error. Not very cool if you want to ensure you're actually wiping the full drive.

I didn't realize it would abort on error. Definitely not optimal. Is there a command to add to force continue?

Jim F

I "think" dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda conv=noerror

But by design disk drives correct media errors on write by re-mapping the sectors.

Thus when you have a write error, either:

1) Your drive has run out of spare sectors to re-map to.

2) You have a controller / cable / power / etc. issue that is keeping the writes from working.

I have a client that does a lot of disk wiping via shred. I advise them that if a write error occurs, they should just physically destroy the drive instead of taking time to troubleshoot what the real cause of the problem is.

Greg

All this reminds me of all the hard drives in modern copy machines. These are almost all unencrypted, and unwiped. Huge amount of older or off-lease machines sitting in warehouses, or re-delivered to other customers, all with huge amounts of private data on the drives. This is criminal to not have a wipe solution built in to these copiers. Jim F -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org