(Solved) Advice - wipe completely or remove files and wayland

Fullsteam · 2024-02-20 19:29:48

Hi there

I've been running arch for about 3 years now from memory and i'm just after some technical advice.

Had to reinstall grub on a new board.
But my system is kind of a mess and i'm looking to reinstall to cleanup stuff like configs.
This would for things like wayland so i know its not being messed with by old configs.

My question is do i need zero out my partitioned drive completely or can run rm -rf / to get rid of everything and start from pacstrap on the root filesystem

Drive in question a 1TB samsung 970 pro nvme
Partitions a 500mb boot partition
A luks encrypted root partition filling the rest of the drive

Note : not sure this post fits here let me know if not.
Also should i make a new post in wm desktop support for help with wayland?

Thank you for any help or advice provided : )

Last edited by Fullsteam (2024-02-22 07:56:30)

Trilby · 2024-02-20 19:38:45

Almost none of that makes any sense. If you are going to reinstall, you don't need to "rm" anything, and certainly not securely wipe the drive: you just repartition and / or create new filesystems and move on*. But there should be no reason to reinstall just to remove "configs". Just remove those configs.

But then on top of that, there are no "wayland" configs. None. You have have configuration files for any current compositor you are using, but these would just be under ~/.config/ in a directory named for the compositor.

Given the way this was asked, I gather you are facing some problem running some wayland compositor, and for some reason you think reinstalling the entire system is a good step in troubleshooting: it isn't ... at all. If you want help with issues starting a wayland compositor, ask about that!

Last edited by Trilby (2024-02-20 19:39:55)

Fullsteam · 2024-02-20 19:58:51

Sorry to clarify i'm just using wayland as an example but thank for the information regarding that.

Basically i just want to know if i want to keep the same partition scheme but basically want to wipe everything back to the pacstrap step (essentially just run a full clean up of the system back to the beginning) so delete packages libraries configs etc do i need to repartition or zero out my drive or can i just leave the partitions alone.

seth · 2024-02-20 20:31:41

do i need to repartition or zero out my drive or can i just leave the partitions alone

No and no.

You'll have to re-create the filesystem to start with a blank slate.
Your previous files wold technically still all be there, but the new filesystem does neither know nor care what bits are on the drive before writing there.

The only reason why you would want to "securely" wipe a drive would be to make sure the data cannot be restored by somebody else getting full access to the drive (because it might compromise you), not for a re-installation.
Creating the filesystem is essentially a "fast format" operation.

Fullsteam · 2024-02-20 22:58:28

So if i zeroed out my drive before encrypting originally so all data is within the encrypted partition and i intend to continue using the drive for years to come, if someone doesn't have the encryption key the data is realistically useless?
And the remanant data from the previous install that is there will end up being overwritten with use?

seth · 2024-02-20 23:17:03

If you start writing over a formerly encrypted partition, the data there becomes useless very quickly even with the key.
And after (re)creating the filesystem there won't be "remnant data", the new filesystem is empty.

The underlying data on the drive will - of course - at some point be overwritten, yes.

Fullsteam · 2024-02-22 06:19:21

so created a new filesystem over the old one and did a reinstall so i consider that advice part solved.

Also after install i installed wayland it worked fantastic untill I installed the kde-applications-meta package then when i went to login again i got no splash screen just a black window with a cursor.

So from here considering the original title of this post is answered and the further problem likely as trilby said compositor (kwin) related should i edit the title of this post or close it and open a new one in applications desktops sub section of the forum?

EDIT
_____

Turns out i was running egl Streams not GBM and didn't understand what the wiki was saying in regards to enviroment variables

So when to enter the gbm backend snippet it means in the /etc/enviroment section for the next person who gets lost like i did

link to wiki article for convenience
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Wayland

to needing open a new thread for a new issue yes i know

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Genera … ow_to_Post
Choose one topic per thread. Long threads are typically discouraged in the technical issue subforums

marking this as solved

Last edited by Fullsteam (2024-02-22 07:59:21)

Arch Linux

#1 2024-02-20 19:29:48

(Solved) Advice - wipe completely or remove files and wayland

#2 2024-02-20 19:38:45

Re: (Solved) Advice - wipe completely or remove files and wayland

#3 2024-02-20 19:58:51

Re: (Solved) Advice - wipe completely or remove files and wayland

#4 2024-02-20 20:31:41

Re: (Solved) Advice - wipe completely or remove files and wayland

#5 2024-02-20 22:58:28

Re: (Solved) Advice - wipe completely or remove files and wayland

#6 2024-02-20 23:17:03

Re: (Solved) Advice - wipe completely or remove files and wayland

#7 2024-02-22 06:19:21

Re: (Solved) Advice - wipe completely or remove files and wayland

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