Upstream gnome-disk-utility has the ability through udisks to do a ATA Enchanced Secure erase. For systems that don't have this operational or drives that need other low-level commands sent to them before installation, they would need to use the hdparm utility which is not included on the liveDVD. I believe this is the correct place to request hdparm being added to the installation image. I know Ubuntu includes it by default. It is the only way to zero out an SATA SSD without using up the TBW unnecessarily.
Yes, this issue tracker is indeed the correct place.
Do you have any references to how gnome-disk-utility/udisks uses hdparm? I grepped through the sources for both projects and couldn't find anything beyond some references in udisks man pages that talk about various cmdline options being similar.
I believe udisks has its own implementation to send ATA commands; udisks and hdparm are independent. For a similar program that is included in the default workstation image, see nvme-cli. It is to nvme disks that hdparm is for ATA disks.
What is often referenced when ATA secure erase goes awry is https://github.com/storaged-project/udisks/blob/master/src/udiskslinuxdriveata.c which helps illustrate the problem - I know udisks has the ability. I could not find any case where the secure erase ata command can be done with udisksctl or any other standard udisks utility. I also could not figure out why hdparm will show that ATA secure erase is available and at the same time gnome-disk-utility would show it not available.
But having the functionality of ATA secure erase is not a full solution; there are functions hdparm can do like identify and reset an ATA drives dco which can't be done using udisks. Fixing or tuning disks in a data destructive manner is important capability to have before an install.
Ah, I see. Thanks for the explanation!
We discussed in today's Workstation WG meeting that it might make sense to add hdparm as a soft dep to either udisks or gnome-disk-utility, but if neither of them use it then it doesn't make sense of course. If we add it to Workstation then it should be listed explicitly in comps I guess.
hdparm
udisks
gnome-disk-utility
If it's not used by udisks then I kinda think you should just install it yourself when needed? Loading the Workstation live image with lots of command line tools is not really desired. (nvme-cli itself seems a little weird; that's really on the default image?)
nvme-cli seems to be pulled in to the live image from anaconda-tools comps group.
If it's not used by udisks then I kinda think you should just install it yourself when needed? Loading the Workstation live image with lots of command line tools is not really desired.
I'm inclined to agree. It doesn't seem like there's anything to do for this issue.
I don't hear any objections - closing.
Metadata Update from @aday: - Issue close_status updated to: Won't fix - Issue status updated to: Closed (was: Open)
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