I would like to create a customized image that will do the following and I am not even sure if it is possible.
I would like the image to boot and immediately determine the number of installed drives ide/scsi/raid and use the dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/hdX command to wipe each one of these drives and display a message when completed indicating sucess or failure.
Then I would like to upon some kind of user intervention keystroke ect. show a listing of the installed hardware like:
processor type
processor speed
amount of ram
hard drives and sizes
network cards
optical drives
sound card type
video card type.
I have investigated it somewhat and think that I probably have to run a script at init and that is about all I have learned. The command for wiping the hard drives seems to be a unterminated perl loop so I was interested in how/if that could be used to automatically move to the next drive when the first has completed?
Can anyone point me to sample scripts or help me understand if it is possible to do before I spend time testing only to be disappointed.
I work for a recycling company that refurbishes computers and has to destroy lots of data and would like to do it with Linux not a shredder. We have a dos based solution that works great but would like more flexibility that linux offers.

Thanks in advance
Kevo