31/01/2008 · 09:36 AM
#11
lol @ Anfit
I think you`re right AGM. A search of that command on the web caused me to find this site:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EncryptedFilesystemHowto8
Basically, the site is about encryption and why it`s necessary sometimes.
Relevant quote:
"If you do not have a fresh computer, it is good to think about erasing your hard disk before setting up encryption. Erasing is also good because an attacker will be unable to determine how much encrypted data do you have on your hard disk and how much is a free space. However, it can take a lot of time, typical several hours or even days. You can use [WWW] DBAN tool or dd command:
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda bs=16M
In the above command use a block size that divides evenly into the size of your hard drive so that there won`t be a partial block left over at the end of your drive that dd wouldn`t write to because it couldn`t fit an entire block in. For example instead of bs=16M you might need bs=5M. Block sizes of less than 1M may slow down the throughput. "