Re: [Sheflug] Recovering a deleted file

[Jon Masters <jonathan [at] xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 25 Jun 2003, Nicola Richmond wrote:

> I've just deleted a file by accident. Does anyone know of anyway I can
> recover it? It's an openoffice impress file.

The one time I deleted I file I needed back, I immediately hard powered
off the machine without sync'ing (i.e. not conventional shutdown to
prevent disk updates - though some will argue this can make things worse).

With the machine back up in single user (LILO: linux -s) (grub: linux -s)
use the man page for debugfs and be prepared to waste a lot of time[0].

That said in this case I could have rewritten the content in the time it
took to recover it - but I felt like a challenge. There is generally more
luch with smaller files as these use fewer inodes on disk though if
unlucky you will have lost it completely.

Jon.

P.S. This might be a good time to consider using the GNOME/KDE/whatever
     tools to perform routine "delete" operations on your desktop box.

[0] There is a great story on usenet about someone who repaired a deleted
binary library (probably libc I believe) while the system was still
running without powering it off or interrupting normal service...but that
guy was plainly one of the old school grey bearded greats. :-)

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