Wipe floppies, Zip disks, USB sticks and hard disks with five verified patterns, and name the bit line that is failing.
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One command, 254 tests, 10 shell modules, and no runtime dependency beyond a POSIX system and gum. kiyome is 清め, Japanese for purification. Its companion kakikomi writes disk images.
$ kiyome /dev/disk6
Device: /dev/disk6, 64.0 MiB, DISK IMAGE
Everything on it is erased, including:
+67.1 MB disk6
Plan: 1 pass of unique data, 0xAA, 0x55, 0xFF and 0x00, each read back
then eject
Type disk6 to erase, or anything else to stop: disk6
Unmounting /dev/disk6...
Disk unmounted
Measuring /dev/disk6 before wiping it, so every limit comes from this disk.
Measured read: 222666 KiB/s, 26ms to reach a sector, allowing 3x that.
Measured write: 27028 KiB/s, 27ms to reach a sector, allowing 3x that.
Pass 1 of 1, writing per-chunk unique data 100% 438.4 MiB/s 0m00s left
Pass 1 of 1, verifying per-chunk unique data 100% 237.9 MiB/s 0m00s left
Pass 1 of 1, writing 0xAA 100% 888.9 MiB/s 0m00s left
Pass 1 of 1, verifying 0xAA 100% 400.0 MiB/s 0m00s left
Pass 1 of 1, writing 0x55 100% 941.2 MiB/s 0m00s left
Pass 1 of 1, verifying 0x55 100% 240.6 MiB/s 0m00s left
Pass 1 of 1, writing 0xFF 100% 888.9 MiB/s 0m00s left
Pass 1 of 1, verifying 0xFF 100% 390.2 MiB/s 0m00s left
Pass 1 of 1, writing 0x00 100% 711.1 MiB/s 0m00s left
Pass 1 of 1, verifying 0x00 100% 280.7 MiB/s 0m00s left
Wiped /dev/disk6: every byte of every pattern read back as written.
Ejecting /dev/disk6...
Ejected. /dev/disk6 is safe to remove.| Tool | Why | Install |
|---|---|---|
gum |
The terminal interface: menus, prompts, tables and colours | brew install gum. Installed automatically by the Homebrew formula |
POSIX sh, dd, cmp, od |
The tool itself | Preinstalled on macOS and Linux. bash is not required |
openssl |
The per-chunk unique pattern | Preinstalled |
newfs_msdos, or sfdisk and mkfs.fat |
--create on macOS, or on Linux |
Preinstalled on macOS; apt install fdisk dosfstools |
mkfs.exfat |
--create on disks over 32 GiB on Linux |
apt install exfatprogs |
brew install gufranco/tap/kiyomeOr from source:
git clone https://github.com/gufranco/kiyome.git
cd kiyome
make installmake install copies the tool, its man page and its bash, zsh and fish completions under ~/.local, and puts kiyome in ~/.local/bin; set PREFIX to change that. The Homebrew formula installs the same files.
$ kiyome doctor
gum ok /opt/homebrew/bin/gum
dd ok /bin/dd, bsd
cmp ok /usr/bin/cmp, bsd
od ok /usr/bin/od, bsd
awk ok /usr/bin/awk, bsd 20200816
sed ok /usr/bin/sed, bsd
sudo ok /usr/bin/sudo
sha256sum|shasum ok /sbin/sha256sum, bsd 1.0
diskutil ok /usr/sbin/diskutil
hdiutil ok /usr/bin/hdiutil
openssl ok /usr/bin/openssl| Command | Purpose |
|---|---|
kiyome [options] <device|mount_point> |
Overwrite that disk with five verified patterns, then eject it |
kiyome with no arguments |
Ask for the disk and the number of passes when run in a terminal |
kiyome doctor |
List the tools kiyome needs and whether they are installed |
kiyome version, kiyome help |
Print the version or the full usage page |
| Option | Effect |
|---|---|
--passes N |
Repeat the five patterns N times. 1 by default |
--create |
Leave a fresh FAT32 or exFAT filesystem behind instead of a blank disk |
--allow-internal |
Allow an internal disk. The disk holding the running system is always refused |
--json |
Print the result as one JSON object, for scripts |
--theme <name> |
Colours of the terminal interface |
--passes=3 works too, and -- ends the options. The environment variables KIYOME_PASSES=N, KIYOME_CREATE=y, KIYOME_ALLOW_INTERNAL=y and KIYOME_JSON=y set the same options; an option on the command line wins.
kiyome /dev/disk4 # one pass, then eject
kiyome --passes 3 /dev/sdb # three passes
kiyome /Volumes/USB # a mounted volume stands for its whole disk
kiyome --create /Volumes/USB # leave a FAT32 or exFAT filesystem behindA disk is named by its device, such as /dev/disk4, or by any volume mounted from it, such as /Volumes/USB; kiyome works out the whole disk behind the volume and wipes all of it.
kiyome follows the shared command-line contract of its family, described in FAMILY.md.
On a terminal with gum installed, kiyome draws its menus, prompts, tables and messages with gum; in a pipe or a script the output stays plain text. --theme, else KIYOME_THEME, else KODOUGU_THEME picks the colours, the last one shared by every kodougu tool: kodougu (default), catppuccin-mocha, catppuccin-latte, dracula, nord, gruvbox, tokyo-night or mono. KODOUGU_ACCENT=#RRGGBB replaces only the accent, and NO_COLOR turns colour off.
export KODOUGU_THEME=catppuccin-mochaEach pass writes five patterns and reads every one back before the next: AES-CTR data unique to every chunk, then 0xAA, 0x55, 0xFF and 0x00. The unique data catches a disk that answers from a cache or maps two addresses to the same place. The four fixed patterns hold every bit at 0 and at 1.
A wrong byte is reported with the bit lines involved. One line always wrong points at a stuck data line in a cable, adapter or drive; scattered errors point at worn media.
graph LR
A["confirm the disk"] --> B["measure it"]
B --> C["write a pattern"]
C --> D["read it back"]
D --> E{"every byte right?"}
E -->|yes| F["next pattern"]
E -->|no| G["stop, eject, name the bit lines"]
F --> C
kiyome first times the disk on itself, then gives each transfer a deadline from that measurement. A mismatch, a stall or a vanished device stops the run at once and ejects the disk.
| Drive | Treatment |
|---|---|
| Zip, Jaz, PocketZip | Tighter deadlines and no retries; a stall is treated as a mistracking head, which damages the next cartridge it meets |
| Floppy, SuperDisk | No retries, and the run waits for you to remove the disk since these drives have no software eject |
| Everything else | Three attempts per chunk, then a stop |
The disk holding the running system is always refused, and a mounted volume is unmounted before anything is written.
Everything is POSIX sh with ShellCheck -o all at zero findings and no disabled checks. The suites run on macOS under /bin/sh and dash, the system's bash 3.2 and zsh, and Homebrew's current bash and zsh, and on Ubuntu under dash, bash, bash --posix and zsh in a privileged container.
Every run works on the five toolsets in common use: Linux with GNU or uutils coreutils, and macOS with the tools it ships, Homebrew's newer builds of them, or Homebrew's uutils tools. Every tool macOS ships that Homebrew also builds newer, from bash and zsh to openssl and perl, is tested in both builds. CI runs the whole suite on each, and kiyome doctor names the flavor and version of every core tool, such as gnu 9.7, uutils 0.12.0 or bsd 20200816, so a bug report says which tools ran.
Every screen, recorded from a real run with make screens
 The typed name, under the danger box |
 The result |
 The disk picker |
 An error |
 doctor checks every tool it needs |
 The version badge in six themes |
 The help page |
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
make fmt |
Formats every script with shfmt |
make lint |
shfmt, ShellCheck on every script, test and completion, mandoc on the man page, and yamllint and actionlint on the workflows |
make test |
The bats tests under the system sh |
make test-all |
The same tests under every shell, both builds of bash and zsh included on macOS |
make test-linux |
The same tests in an Ubuntu container |
make coverage |
bashcov line coverage on this Mac and in the Ubuntu container, merged, with the 100% gate CI enforces |
make screens |
Record the README screens from the real tool with VHS, on macOS |
The tests attach file-backed disks with hdiutil or losetup and wipe them for real. CI runs them on Ubuntu and macOS. Once CI passes on a push to main, semantic-release runs: a feat or fix commit publishes a release, updates KIYOME_VERSION in lib/core.sh and the CHANGELOG, and bumps the Homebrew formula.