From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Feb 19 19:40:55 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 656A316C4CD for ; Mon, 19 Feb 2007 19:40:55 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from volker@vwsoft.com) Received: from frontmail.ipactive.de (frontmail.maindns.de [85.214.95.103]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2414E13C471 for ; Mon, 19 Feb 2007 19:40:54 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from volker@vwsoft.com) Received: from mail.vtec.ipme.de (Q7d24.q.ppp-pool.de [89.53.125.36]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by frontmail.ipactive.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3F757128842 for ; Mon, 19 Feb 2007 20:40:48 +0100 (CET) Received: from [192.168.16.3] (cesar.sz.vwsoft.com [192.168.16.3]) by mail.vtec.ipme.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id C15DB2E564 for ; Mon, 19 Feb 2007 20:40:36 +0100 (CET) Message-ID: <45D9FD35.6040702@vwsoft.com> Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2007 20:40:37 +0100 From: Volker User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 (X11/20070119) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Enigmail-Version: 0.94.0.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-VWSoft-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-MailScanner-From: volker@vwsoft.com X-ipactive-MailScanner-Information: Please contact the ISP for more information X-ipactive-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-ipactive-MailScanner-From: volker@vwsoft.com Subject: getting garbage faster using FreeBSD? X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2007 19:40:55 -0000 Hi! For my dentist I'm currently in the process of destroying some tape cartridges (SLR7) and also two hard disks (147G SCSI). As I started for the tapes, I've used dd to fill the tape with random garbage. Just a simple `dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/nsa0'. The tape sits there since 48 hours writing a block of data every other minute and still didn't fill up the tape completely. The system this is running on is a P-4 3GHz machine using FreeSBIE 2.0 (6.2-RELEASE based). I suspect this to be a slow /dev/random. Is there any chance to speed up /dev/random? Would a hifn accelerator card help here to get FreeBSD produce garbage faster? As there is medical data on all media I really need garbage (/dev/zero wouldn't be enough for data security as this might get recovered). Thx, Volker