memory - How to get Linux to be loaded to RAM?

09
2014-02
  • Ensayia

    I'm soon to acquire several new computers on the grounds that I wipe their hard disks. I don't need the drives to be randomized, just zeroed out with dd.

    How can I can boot Linux from a flash drive that will load into RAM, so that I can boot it, remove the drive, and boot the next machine to have several going at once?

    • Answers
  • user55325

    If you're using an Ubuntu live CD/USB disk, you can accomplish this with the toram kernel option. Add it to the boot options before you start the OS.

    If you want a different distro, this list might help.

  • Mike Naylor

    You could also use DBAN for cleaning drives. It's been around a while and works well. You can boot from a CD or from a USB drive directly into the utility.
    The image is only 15MB.

    EDIT: Upon further research DBAN does load into RAM once it starts running and the media can be removed. See Using DBAN section

    Hope this helps.

  • Tiny Herr Loyalität

    Yes Sir, there are plenty of them.

    Have a look a this list:

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


    • Related Question

    linux - How to wipe one sector with DD?
  • Daniel Gratz

    What is the dd command in Linux for securely wiping sector 62 of a hard drive. This sector lies in track zero, begins at offset 31744 and is 512 bytes long.

    I'd like to know how to wipe it over 1000 times with ultra random data and then wipe over it say 100 times with zeros.

    My computer has only one hard drive and I'll be doing this from an Ubuntu live CD using the terminal.


    • Related Answers
  • bubu

    run the following command however times you want: warning: this has its share of risk of damaging your valuable files & data. don't run unless you understand it... 

    $ sudo su [enter]
# dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 seek=62 [enter]
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 seek=62 [enter]

    note that

    repeat [times] [command]

    would repeat the command [command] for [times].

    EDIT1:
    substitute urandom with random if you want more randomness
    substitute random with urandom if you want more speed

    EDIT2:
    add the zeroing back