hdparm missing from 8.0.0 live images
hdparm is missing from 8.0.0 live images. It was present in live images
up to 7.8.0. I only looked at iso-hybrid.
hdparm is in my view an essential utility for live images as it enables
identification of ATA devices and pre-installation ATA security erase:
https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase
- hdparm is a great tool for checking that an ATA device has been
correctly configured by the BIOS and kernel *before* installation.
- ATA security erase is of special significance to SSDs as it permits
the drive to mark all cells as empty, restoring factory write
performance. For system disks, this can only be performed *before*
installation.
To use hdparm, 8.0.0 live image users must have a network connection to
install the package; this installation must be performed after each
boot. Workable, but ugly.
I suspect that the reason 7.8.0 and earlier had hdparm was that
task-laptop depended on pm-utils, which recommended hdparm. However,
this dependency on pm-utils was removed in tasksel 3.30:
http://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs/main/t/tasksel/tasksel_3.31_changelog
Should hdparm be restored for live images, and if so, how? Added as a
recommends for task-laptop, for some other task, or by elevating the
priority of hdparm from optional to standard?
Kind regards,
--
Ben Caradoc-Davies <ben@wintersun.org>
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