1. Reduced font size for data info.
2. Used a define for text point size to make it easier
to change size.
3. Started work on function to parse sense data for older
versions of hdparm (9.60) that fail to parse the real max
sectors correctly. (fixed in 9.65).
4. Miscellaneous changes.
More changes to follow ..
1. For devices that support HPA/DCO (not NVMe) nwipe
displays the HPA status, it toggles every two seconds
the size and the temperature i.e "[ 1TB][ 35C]" with
the HPA status such as [HPA disabled], [HPA ENABLED!],
[HPA unknown]. The HPA ENABLED is highlighted with red
text and a white background. HPA_disabled is standard
white text on blue background.
More code to follow, a new option to be added, HPA, disable/enable
which will disable the HPA and shut down the system. On manually
powering back up the HPA should be reported as disabled.
Then lots of testing.
1. Further work was completed, putting the HPA status and HPA size into
the report/certificate.
2. Moved some general functions that may be used throughout nwipe
into miscellaneous.c These tend to be string processing functions.
3. Tested certificate HPA status. There are three possible states of the HPA
i. Enabled and HPA size is displayed on the certificate
ii. Disabled, the drive reports it's real size to the O.S.
iii. Unknown. Nwipe could not determine whether there is a HPA or not.
This may be caused by the use of a USB adapter or could be a bad drive,
or finally a change in hdparms format when displaying HPA information.
More code to follow, next on the list is to add the HPA status into the
drive selection screen in the GUI, so when you select the drive you can see
the status of HPA and choose to disable it.
1. nwipe now reads the HPA set and real number of
sectors and the DSO real max sectors. It determines
from these values whether the HPA is enabled, disabled
or in a unknown state. The values are logged to nwipes
log and flags are set in the drives context.
More code will follow that adds this information to the PDF
certificate and to the drive selection window in the GUI.
1. Fix a bug in the static and random pass code
where I unnecessarily moved the decrement of z (the
count of bytes remaining) to after the periodic sync
which meant every time it sync'ed z wasn't decremented due
to r being used as a general results variable for the
fdatasync function.
I prefer to just have a variable be responsible for just
one thing hence my assumption r wasn't used for two different
things.
Changed the position of the decrement of z, pass_done and
round_done to their original position prior to the periodic
sync.
1. Added the red cross icon located on the top right of
the certificate. This is displayed when the wipe is aborted
or failed to complete due to disc I/O errors etc. The
green tick icon is displayed on a successful wipe.
2. When the user manually aborts the wipe, the bytes so
far erased incorrectly displayed as zero. This change updates the
c->bytes_erased variable in the static pass and random
pass functions to correct this.
1. Added rounds requested & completed. Coloured
green if equal and red if not.
2. Fixed endtime sometimes not being recorded when
a wipe is aborted. This affected the creation of the
PDF filename. Now ok.
3. Added throughput using the appropriate nomenclature
such as KB/sec MB/sec, GB/sec etc
1. Added bytes erased including percentage, green
if equal to disc size and red if the drive hasn't been
fully erased at least once.
2. Added explanation of bytes erased to certificate.
3. Added throughput
1. Change model/serial no in header to bold and move left
2. Create a filename for the report that identifies the
wipe uniquely ie:
nwipe_report_YY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS_Model_XXXX_Serial_XXXX.pdf
3. Move size data 2 characters right to allow for up to two
space prefix on size string. So data doesn't get written over
the end of the 'Size:' label.
1. Fix @param in pdfgen.h, committed and accepted upstream
2. Added size of disk in bytes
3. When NVME drive show message "Not applicable" for HPA, DCO
4. Highlight status ERASED, FAILED etc with coloured ellipse
5. Added function help for nwipe_log (shows in hints in IDE)
1. Rearranged the layout so the Tech/ID signature
is at the bottom of the report.
2. Added start date/time
3. Added end date/time
4. Changed data from helvetica to helvetica-bold
5. Created a definition for PDF_DARK_GREEN text in
create_pdf.h and moved the previously created PDF_GRAY
to create_pdf.h, to keep pdfgen.h vanilla.
6. Added the erasure status, ERASED, FAILED, ABORTED.
ERASED in green and FAILED, ABORTED in red.
Further code to follow ..
1. Display unknown in serial number field for loopback device
2. Added device type, USB, SATA, VIRT etc
3. Added duration of wipe in hh:mm:ss
4. Added pseudo random number generator type, twister, isaac etc
5. Added final blanking pass type, none, zeros, ones
6. Added number of rounds
1. Changed most titles in certificate to gray with
the data in black.
Started adding real data to template including:
Model, serial no., method, verify, size.
more code to follow...
1. Embed the images contained in the PDF into nwipes code
rather than use external image files.
2. Changed the font from Times New Roman to Helvetica
to give it a cleaner look.
I was searching for a DBAN alternative that runs in a normal Linux distro so I can hot-swap drives and not hale to reboot the system. When I found nwipe, I went to install it in a grml live system. Turns out, nwipe ships with grml by default as you can see in [grml's dpkg.list](https://packages.grml.org/files/grml64-small_2021.07/dpkg.list).
It's not exactly the most up-to-date version (0.30-1+b2 for amd64) because grml is close to Debian stable. It even comes with the the small live system image.
