Gee! These Aren't Roasted!
I'm trying to wipe the hard drive of an old Mac G4 "Graphics" using an Ubuntu 10.10 Ppc live CD and the terminal command of "dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda". I simply get a line that says "permission denied". At no time am I asked for a password, but I entered the command "sudo passwd ubuntu" to set a new one and tried entering it first but it says "no command found". I'm obviously missing something basic here - could anyone fill me in? Any other suggestions appreciated.Thanks.
"Discovery begins when you throw away the instruction manual!"
Iced Blended Vanilla Crème Ubuntu
You could us Gparted from the live cd and just reformat the partition in question,
Last edited by lindsay7; March 4th, 2012 at 08:42 PM.
Six Saturdays a week for me.
I Ubuntu, Therefore, I Am
Use sudo before your dd command.
Gee! These Aren't Roasted!
snowpine - I did as you suggessted and the command was accepted. Just for my continuing education, how long should it take to wipe a hard drive? I enetered the command and got a blinking cursor and let it run for over two hours and nothing changed. Not knowing if it was working or not, I got impatient and closed out. Before closing completely I got a message that a process was still running. Was I just too quick to pull the trigger?
lindsay7 - I then tried your suggestion and of course the partition was deleted in about 30 seconds. I do understand that the "dd" command wipes all traces of data where the G-Parted erase does not, but I was only trying to make space, not sanitize my hard drive. Thanks to both for responding.
"Discovery begins when you throw away the instruction manual!"
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