Recovering lost data

Yook

Is there any way of recovering files with Linux. I'm running Debian Sarge 3.1 with 2.6 kernel. The data is on an ext3 file system.

It is just a case of rm * in a directory, any ideas?

Thanks all!

leeroybrown

Unless some magic way of doing it easily has been found it's pretty much impossible on ext3. Unlike ext2, during an unlink on ext3 the block pointers in the inodes are zeroed. This is so an unlink can be safely completed based on the journal after a filesystem crash.

Khannie

Yeah, unfortunately you're screwed. I did this myself a while back and checked around on the interweb. Damn the power of the rm command!

The Shol'va

Khannie wrote:

Yeah, unfortunately you're screwed. I did this myself a while back and checked around on the interweb. Damn the power of the rm command!

That was my data. If you'll now excuse me I'm off to shoot the bastard who thought it would be funny to type rm *

Steveire

Holy crap.

You'd expect some kind of confirmation for a simple destructive command like that.

Karoma

Probably why many people and distro's alias rm to rm -i


nice read : http://linux.sys-con.com/read/117909.htm
If you do intend on getting the data back: I hope you stopped using the HDD... TBH, I wouldn't bother unless the data is very important.

Yook

I used grep to regain as much of the files as possible. Now to look through the 528meg text file

The Shol'va wrote:

That was my data. If you'll now excuse me I'm off to shoot the bastard who thought it would be funny to type rm *

He's actually not referring to me, i'm just the admin of the server. One of his dickhead friends decided to rm * a directory full of important data to be funny!

MunsterCycling

I'll load the shotgun... Round up the posse.

PhantomBeaker

Steveire wrote:

Holy crap.

You'd expect some kind of confirmation for a simple destructive command like that.

Ah... well, this is where Unix-heads get ultra macho and say "Well, the rm command was written so that it avoids nasty questions like asking 'Are you sure?' all the time." while thumping their chest.

In other words they wrote those utilities not to be fool-proof, but quite the opposite. They see the fools and they don't want them in their god-like presence, so they punish them... they shun and punish them by not asking them if they really meant it when they said "rm -rf /" while they were root.

But alas they forget that not any mortal can be forever godlike, and that even the most erudite of unixphile will slip up now and then, and delete precious data.

If you ask why it's still the case, and that this is why it puts newbies off unix, they'll pound their unix chests again and say "Well, you're quite welcome to write your own version of rm if you want.". I'm not sure what comes after that. They say it's a mating ritual but I believe that to be a myth. I reckon they probably do something more hardcore, like hand-compile all the packages in Gentoo... with their feet.

Aoife (who actually does love *nix type stuff - but I don't pound my chest, it hurts.)

Khannie

Have to agree with the sentiment in the above post. I've noticed the introduction of the "wastebasket" in gnome for the mere mortal now though. Mostly I just find it annoying (as it leads to inappropriately reported free space, etc...so it needs more integration), though I must admit that I found the ol' recycle bin useful a few times when I used to use windows.

po0k

PhantomBeaker wrote:

Ah... well, this is where Unix-heads get ultra macho and say "Well, the rm command was written so that it avoids nasty questions like asking 'Are you sure?' all the time." while thumping their chest.

In other words they wrote those utilities not to be fool-proof, but quite the opposite. They see the fools and they don't want them in their god-like presence, so they punish them... they shun and punish them by not asking them if they really meant it when they said "rm -rf /" while they were root.

But alas they forget that not any mortal can be forever godlike, and that even the most erudite of unixphile will slip up now and then, and delete precious data.

If you ask why it's still the case, and that this is why it puts newbies off unix, they'll pound their unix chests again and say "Well, you're quite welcome to write your own version of rm if you want.". I'm not sure what comes after that. They say it's a mating ritual but I believe that to be a myth. I reckon they probably do something more hardcore, like hand-compile all the packages in Gentoo... with their feet.

Aoife (who actually does love *nix type stuff - but I don't pound my chest, it hurts.)

Quoted for truth.

It promotes a clear mind, focused on the tasks at hand. If you don't want to delete something, don't tell the machine to do so.

Contrary to the old myth, computing is not for everyone. However, every jackass can be taught to click a mouse over the blinking banner ad. And then said jackass can be replaced with a script.

galactus

PhantomBeaker wrote:

Ah... well, this is where Unix-heads get ultra macho and say "Well, the rm command was written so that it avoids nasty questions like asking 'Are you sure?' all the time." while thumping their chest.

In other words they wrote those utilities not to be fool-proof, but quite the opposite. They see the fools and they don't want them in their god-like presence, so they punish them... they shun and punish them by not asking them if they really meant it when they said "rm -rf /" while they were root.

But alas they forget that not any mortal can be forever godlike, and that even the most erudite of unixphile will slip up now and then, and delete precious data.

If you ask why it's still the case, and that this is why it puts newbies off unix, they'll pound their unix chests again and say "Well, you're quite welcome to write your own version of rm if you want.". I'm not sure what comes after that. They say it's a mating ritual but I believe that to be a myth. I reckon they probably do something more hardcore, like hand-compile all the packages in Gentoo... with their feet.

Aoife (who actually does love *nix type stuff - but I don't pound my chest, it hurts.)

A great post with a lot of truth. At least the sterotypes on User Friendly are funny.

AndrewMc

PhantomBeaker wrote:

But alas they forget that not any mortal can be forever godlike, and that even the most erudite of unixphile will slip up now and then, and delete precious data.

Whereupon the unixphile will quietly, saying nothing and hoping nobody notices, restore from backup as fast as they can and hope nothing important happened since then

Syth

AndrewMc wrote:

Whereupon the unixphile will quietly, saying nothing and hoping nobody notices, restore from backup as fast as they can and hope nothing important happened since then

Because the unixphile is probably using a versioned filesystem that they wrote themselves.