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penguins-powerwash

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penguins-powerwash

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penguins-powerwash

A distro-agnostic, filesystem-agnostic factory reset tool for Linux.

Forked from linux-powerwash and rebranded as part of the penguins ecosystem alongside penguins-eggs and penguins-recovery.

penguins-eggs & penguins-recovery integration

penguins-powerwash has bidirectional integration with the penguins ecosystem.

penguins-powerwash → penguins-eggs / penguins-recovery

Event Action
Pre-reset (any mode) Calls eggs produce --naked to snapshot the live system state before wiping
Pre-reset (any mode) Calls penguins-recovery snapshot create pre-powerwash-<mode> if recovery is present
Post-reset (hard/sysprep) Calls penguins-recovery adapter.sh to re-layer recovery tools onto the reset system
Post-backup Notifies eggs so the backup path is recorded in the next ISO manifest

Configure in /etc/penguins-powerwash/eggs-hooks.conf:

EGGS_BIN="/usr/bin/eggs"              # set to "" to disable
RECOVERY_BIN="/usr/bin/penguins-recovery"
PRE_RESET_SNAPSHOT=1                  # create recovery snapshot before reset
PRE_RESET_EGGS_PRODUCE=0              # set 1 to produce a naked ISO before reset
POST_HARD_RESET_ADAPT=1               # re-layer recovery tools after hard reset

penguins-eggs / penguins-recovery → penguins-powerwash

penguins-powerwash registers itself as a plugin for penguins-recovery:

recovery plugin (integration/recovery-plugin/powerwash-plugin.sh):

  • pw_plugin_pre_reset() — no-op (powerwash IS the reset tool)
  • pw_plugin_post_reset() — re-runs penguins-powerwash info to confirm clean state

penguins-powerwash also ships an eggs plugin (integration/eggs-plugin/powerwash-hook.sh):

  • Called by eggs produce to embed the powerwash binary and config into the ISO
  • Adds a GRUB menu entry for "Factory Reset" that boots into powerwash hard mode

Features

Capability Details
Distro support Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, RHEL, Arch, openSUSE, Gentoo, Void — auto-detected
Filesystem support ext4, xfs, btrfs (native snapshots), ZFS (native snapshots), overlayfs
Reset modes Soft, Medium, Hard, Sysprep, Hardware
Backup Pre-reset backup with optional GPG symmetric encryption
Dry-run --dry-run prints every action without executing it
Plugin system Drop .sh files into plugins/{distro,filesystem,hardware}/

Installation

git clone https://github.com/Interested-Deving-1896/penguins-powerwash
cd penguins-powerwash
sudo make install

Usage

sudo penguins-powerwash soft
sudo penguins-powerwash medium
sudo penguins-powerwash hard
sudo penguins-powerwash sysprep --shutdown
sudo penguins-powerwash --dry-run hard
sudo penguins-powerwash backup create --encrypt
sudo penguins-powerwash snapshot create my-label
sudo penguins-powerwash info
sudo penguins-powerwash menu

Reset mode comparison

Mode Dotfiles Packages Home data System config Machine ID
soft ✓ reset unchanged unchanged unchanged unchanged
medium ✓ reset ✓ purged unchanged ✓ sources reset unchanged
hard ✓ reset ✓ purged ✓ wiped ✓ reset unchanged
sysprep unchanged unchanged unchanged ✓ reset ✓ cleared

License

GPL-3.0. See LICENSE.

Upstream

Forked from Interested-Deving-1896/linux-powerwash.