Hose All User Memory On Sl5600: How To?, How to completely wipe 5600 of old data Options

[Windrose]

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit I don't know this, but how do I arrange to completely remove old user data, user installed program remnants, usw., from the memory of an SL5600? I thought I'd try one of Herr Hentges' special distributions, and I want to flash it to a completely "clean", so to speak, Zaurus.

If I try the contortionist Press-And-Hold-C-And-D-While-Pushing-Reset routine <http://www.oesf.org/index.php?title=System#How_do_you_flash_the_Zaurus.3F> I get the blinky lights thing apparently forever, but nothing seems to actually happen to the stored memory. If I select Format from the system update menu (after reset), nothing seems to actually happen. If I flash the appropriate Hentges ROM I get the usual slick install including his Blow_Everything_To_The_SD_Card setup (v. cute by the way), but Some Things Remain Behind. I know because I find programs that I'm fairly sure are not in the Hentges distro (such as Portabase) that I was trying out, and the Contacts database still has my personal contact info, which I'm also fairly sure is not in the Hentges distro.

So how do I make sure all that stuff is erased?

[iamasmith]

Probably the easiest way is to restore a complete factory default NAND flash image for the device.

[Greg2]

So how do I make sure all that stuff is erased?

In terminal do:

CODE

su
cd /home
rm -rf *

Greg

[xamindar]

reset it and turn it on while holding the ok button. Then in the service menu select "format". That's all you have to do!

[Greg2]

reset it and turn it on while holding the ok button.  Then in the service menu select "format".  That's all you have to do!

The format function in that menu will not work with OZ or the Hentges distros to format mtdblock3... which is /home.

Greg

[Windrose]

reset it and turn it on while holding the ok button.  Then in the service menu select "format".  That's all you have to do!

The format function in that menu will not work with OZ or the Hentges distros to format mtdblock3... which is /home.

Right, that was the problem, I was going from an Oz installation to a Oz/Hentges installation, so the Format function did little or nothing. However the too-simple-for-these-complex-times solution of merely doing rm -rf to the contents of /home seems to work just fine, ta.

Also I apparently misspoke. Mistyped. Whatever. The T3 Hentges distro does include a copy of Portabase, so I shouldn't have been surprised that it was still there. Who knew? Now if someone would just recompile StageOne for OZ.

I swear that somewhere, somehow, I saw a nice web page on the SL5600 boot sequence and what gets mapped from ROM to where and how the built-in memory is mapped, but for the life of me I can't find it now. Though there is this nice piece done for IBM DeveloperWorks by Peter Seebach last December: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-lobzaur.html .