[CentOS] wiping out data on a disk (no physical acess to the machine)

[Gordon Messmer]

On 01/12/2013 04:35 PM, Reindl Harald wrote:
> Usually if no service is running "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/your-sysdisk"
> does crash more or less very late and if you destory the datadisks before
> there is nearly zero chance to recover any data

If I care enough to wipe the disks in a server, "usually" and "late" is 
not going to cut it.  Any attempt by the kernel to read any filesystem 
is likely to cause a panic before wiping is complete.  If you want to 
completely wipe a disk, you need the root filesystem to be somewhere else.