# Linux or FreeBSD for PXE based drive wiping software?



## finalturismo (Jan 27, 2022)

So currently me and a friend have been working on a drive wiping software that has PXE integration and a Google style web GUI. Basically any systems on the network can boot into a secondary filesystem via NFS. Once the file system is booted over the network. Commands are sent via broadcast messages to the client machines to run shred commands and that uses image magic to record health status and wipe information to  certificates. Anyway i need good over all driver support and i was wondering if i could switch to FreeBSD instead to prevent having to spend all that time to try and follow the licensing restrictions of Linux.  Pretty much I am wondering if FreeBSD will have enough network, raid and sata controller drivers to wipe most of the Dell, Sun, IBM, HP, Lenovo and Netapp based equipment i will be destroying data on. Any ideas and what i should be looking out for?

I am not concerned with any other drivers besides networking, sata and raid.


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## ralphbsz (Jan 28, 2022)

finalturismo said:


> instead to prevent having to spend all that time to try and follow the licensing restrictions of Linux.


What licensing restrictions? If you just use Linux without modifying its source code, the GPL does not restrict you at all. And it sounds to me that your special "drive wipe OS installation" could be done by starting with a Linux (or any other common OS) distribution, and in the boot software you don't configure normal servers, but instead start your special software. Is there any place where you have to go into the source of either the Linux kernel itself, or of GPL'ed utilities, and modify them?



> Pretty much I am wondering if FreeBSD will have enough network, raid and sata controller drivers to wipe most of the Dell, Sun, IBM, HP, Lenovo and Netapp based equipment i will be destroying data on.


Standard x86 Intel-based servers: All should work fine in FreeBSD. I think there are good drivers for most common RAID and HBA cards (in particular LSI mostly, but also smaller brands). That should cover Dell and Lenovo, and low-end HP and older IBM stuff (pre-Lenovo).

Where it may get a little iffy is the higher-end IBM and HP HBAs and RAID cards used on Intel servers. I know that IBM used to make some interesting ServeRAID cards, and I don't know whether FreeBSD drivers for those exist, but Linux driver's were certainly written.

On Sun, IBM AIX (PowerPC) and HP PA-RISC, Itanium and HP3000 machines: Do you think you can even boot them over the network? Are there supported FreeBSD versions for them? And even if there are, they use some very unusual RAID/HBA cards.

Similarly: NetApp machines are not generic PCs. It would really surprise me if they even boot over PXE. By the way, the do run FreeBSD already inside them.


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