New ShredOS v2024.11_27_x86-64_0.38 - Imminent release

[PartialVolume]

Before I publish the latest ShredOS based on buildroot 24.11 with kernel 6.11 and nwipe 0.38, now is your chance to let me know if there are any specific tools not already included in ShredOS that you might like. The sort of tools I'm thinking of are the small single purpose, typical unix type tools, i.e don't ask for KDE or Gnome etc :-)

I've added lsscsi and lshw and have expanded the image size from 280MB to 300MB as there was only 1.8M free, so there should be about 20MB free for PDF's etc.

[fthobe]

I thought parallel and I felt guilty asking, now I feel guilty seeing that you brought it over, man, you are my hero!!!

[PartialVolume]

Re comments martijnvanbrummelen/nwipe#641 if I add Seagate's OpenSeaChest tools I think this will add about 13Mbyte to the ShredOS image which will make it about 320Mbyte in total.

Would this be a useful addition? I'm ok with it but would like some feedback. I generally boot via USB 3 so booting the kernel only takes seconds however I believe PXE is much slower? Is a larger image an issue for PXE users or does the inclusion of openSeaChest outweigh the downsides?

[fthobe]

Mate, if you have a PXE infrastructure, you have that time as your focus usually lies on reliability ;)

Is there any chance to get you and @martijnvanbrummelen ever on a slack chat or a call?

[fthobe]

@PartialVolume Some notes on PXE: it's usually as slow as you malconfigure it and the images. We serve from SAS SSDs and 25gbe connected VM hosts to gigabit. With 300mb you are well within sensible limits and shouldn't worry. Keep in mind that most OS use PXE only load a skeleton OS like Windows PE and afterwards slipstream with full network file sharing protocols. Everything below 1GByte is usually safe but can become slow, if you cann (pun intended) the setup!

[fthobe]

What I would push for if I'd be you are some other things:

• if seachest (this is something you can evaluate much better than me) is more of an abstraction layer for T10 / T13 / nvme standards than anything else the value might be more of asking for quirks of the drives.

If you think it provides additional value as tool in itself it's great step feature wise.

Also a first vendor approved integration makes it much easier to talk also to others (looking at Samsung, WD, solidigm and sandisk) and have broader support for everything pre NVME. With NVME as standard in servers on the horizon, there will be plenty of disks with the need to be wiped.

[Firminator]

latest version of gsmartcontrol ( https://gsmartcontrol.shaduri.dev/downloads -> https://software.opensuse.org//download.html?project=home:alex_sh:gsmartcontrol:stable_latest&package=gsmartcontrol ) which will install latest version of smartmontools. Although that adds another dependancy and/or manual labour.

[Firminator]

I personally wait for the bootable ISO of SeaTools which I saw announced somewhere that they are working on it, so I wouldn't necessarily put the 13MB SeaTools into ShredOS. You could put it in for the current ShredOS release and once they released their own ISO take it out again. Up to you. Maybe down the road and through collabobartion the Seatools ISO could include nwipe for additional wipes besides what SeaTools already supports (Secure Erase, Enahnced Secure Erase)?

Best would be to have ShredOS support Secure Erase, NVMe Erase etc. and have a small, fast-bootable ISO. I think that was always the main goal, but as technology, specs, drives, formfactors, controllers changed over time ShredOS adapted while staying pretty small at the same time. Just have to be careful not to bloat.

[PartialVolume]

I think I'll go with your suggestion of including it and see how it goes.

If anybody wants to help with this, (and saves me time) the most difficult part is simply writing the openseachest.mk file that pulls source https://github.com/Seagate/openSeaChest/releases/download/v24.08.1/SourceCode_With_Submodules.tar.xz in checks the hash and runs the meson/ninja compile. https://buildroot.org/downloads/manual/adding-packages-meson.txt

Although the above method shown in the link above will hopefully work here is some info on the generic .mk build here https://buildroot.org/downloads/manual/manual.html#generic-package-tutorial

You will also need to submit the changes via a pull request. So if you don't know all about git then you will then to learn that first. I guess what I'm looking for is a programmer, proficient in git and buildroot that can do this in less than a week.

If anybody can achieve this within the next week then please go ahead. If no volunteers, I'll do it myself in a week or so when I have some time.

[fthobe]

I do not believe I possess the skill sets but I can fix up license requirements and write readme if you want?

[Firminator]

Sidenote: we also need to think of burnout. We can't afford pushing and pushing for more features. @PartialVolume and @Knogle recently are the only ones with code contributions really. Just saying. Not a coder here myself. Just an interested power-user :)

[PartialVolume]

@Firminator Thanks for your concern re burnout, it can definitely take its toll, however, I enjoy the coding so at times, when necessary, I do take a break if it gets too much or the other half says 'your not working on nwipe/ShredOS again!! 🤨.

I enjoy the coding and ultimately I want to see nwipe with secure erase methods and a host based PDF, so I guess I'm in this for the long haul.

[PartialVolume]

committed f39f161 upgrading ShredOS to buildroot 24.11 (4,864 files changed +63380 -36286 lines changed)

If anybody wants to build from source and test prior to me publishing a release with .img's and .iso's.

[PartialVolume]

Commit e05541a

Added Seagate's openSeaChest tools, it actually took less space and time than I was expecting, about 5MB in size so only needed to increase the image size to 310MB leaving about 25MB free in the partition for PDF certificates/logs etc.

I've not tried playing with any of the tools yet so if anybody wants to try it out, it's now committed to the master. I only need to fix a network issue for Dell USB ethernet adapters and then I'll publish a official release with .iso's and .img's.

I'm aiming for a release by the end of the week but we'll see how it goes!