[syslinux] Remotely Wipe Hard Drive

[Matthew Holevinski]

Shao,

" Would an accurate statement about your scenario be: All computers
_currently_ are remotely accessible and have Windows installed on their
HDDs.  If that's the case, were you hoping to use a Windows boot-time
menu to chain-boot some flavour of Syslinux and initiate the cleansing
process? "

that's very similiar to what I want to do, although, remember it might be kind
of difficult to apply a ghost image to the same windows partition the computer
is currently using. But you got the right idea, if there is something
I could setup
remotely to where, on next reboot the client could choose an option to
wipe his drive.

otherwise, i have to ship a cd and that could take a week or two,
thought i might be
able to hook up something alittle faster than that. Ya, since syslinux
cannot be installed
over an ntfs partition I might be kinda screwed. I'll keep looking
around for other options
though.

Also even if i could get someone to pxe boot, I don't believe the
local routers to the client
forward pxe requests, so it wouldnt' do me anygood.

Matt

On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 1:59 PM, Miller, Shao
<shao.miller at yrdsb.edu.on.ca> wrote:
> Good day Matthew:
>
> 1. Syslinux can only access files from within the Syslinux-installed
> filesystem at this time.  That could change in a future version, once
> filesystem logic has been enhanced.
> 2. Syslinux cannot be installed on an NTFS filesystem, since there is no
> Syslinux NTFS filesystem logic at this time.
>
> Would an accurate statement about your scenario be: All computers
> _currently_ are remotely accessible and have Windows installed on their
> HDDs.  If that's the case, were you hoping to use a Windows boot-time
> menu to chain-boot some flavour of Syslinux and initiate the cleansing
> process?
>
> If so, Ghost used/uses a strategy whereby they write a contiguous
> partition image file somewhere in the NTFS filesystem, identify the
> image's start sector, then hack the MBR to include a new partition which
> points at the sectors occupied by that file, then they set that
> partition active.  On the reboot, BIOS knows nothing about the fact that
> this partition is actually an image file resident in an NTFS partition.
> To BIOS, it simply boots it.  Such could be a FAT partition image with
> Syslinux installed.  From Syslinux, you could chain a gPXE .lkrn image
> for pxeknife, etc., etc.
>
> - Shao Miller
>
> _______________________________________________
> Syslinux mailing list
> Submissions to Syslinux at zytor.com
> Unsubscribe or set options at:
> http://www.zytor.com/mailman/listinfo/syslinux
> Please do not send private replies to mailing list traffic.
>
>