OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/20061/Recover_Deleted_Files_in_EXT3_ext3undel Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:22:41 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com photorec http://osnews.com/thread?323112 http://osnews.com/thread?323112 Photorec is an awesome piece of software. Don't tell anyone else about it. ;-) Wed, 16 Jul 2008 01:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mikesum32) Comments Nice! http://osnews.com/thread?323133 http://osnews.com/thread?323133 This will make my nast habit of holding shift when I delete something a little less drastic when I realize something important got selected.

I know I know, thats what the trash/recycle bin is for, but at the command line, anything will and does go! Wed, 16 Jul 2008 05:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (hollovoid) Comments RE: Nice! http://osnews.com/thread?323148 http://osnews.com/thread?323148 Yeah I had the habit of using shift too, until I configured konqueror to ignore shift+delete, and I got rid of that crappy habit ;)

But yeah from the command-line, either you have alias rm="rm -i" or you really do have to be careful. Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Knuckles) Comments RE: Nice! http://osnews.com/thread?323154 http://osnews.com/thread?323154 When did that become a nasty habit? I have never deleted a file I didn't want to and I'd rather that than having files I don't need piling up in a system folder. And there never is enough disk space to forget about the "recycled" stuff.
In the nineties it was the "Word" files, in the 00s it was the mp3s, now it is 4Gb DVD images or rips, or in my case 10Gb virtual machine drives - they somehow always manage to fill up your disk drive whatever its size. Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sakeniwefu) Comments Not available http://osnews.com/thread?323156 http://osnews.com/thread?323156 $ sudo aptitude install ext3undel
[...]
Couldn't find any package whose name or description matched "ext3undel"
Couldn't find any package whose name or description matched "ext3undel"
No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed.
[...] Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (msundman) Comments RE[2]: Nice! http://osnews.com/thread?323164 http://osnews.com/thread?323164
When did that become a nasty habit? I have never deleted a file I didn't want to and I'd rather that than having files I don't need piling up in a system folder.


When your doing system things you shoulden't do after being up for a day and 1/2. ;) Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (hollovoid) Comments RE: Not available http://osnews.com/thread?323169 http://osnews.com/thread?323169 http://freshmeat.net/projects/ext3undel/ Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (libray) Comments Comment by righard http://osnews.com/thread?323171 http://osnews.com/thread?323171 If this works, it's no more ext2 for me. I never switched to ext3 because for some reason I never learned stop doing this...
$ rm * -R
Hmm, why did that take so long, did I forget something?
$ pwd
/home/righard
yes i did, damn Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (righard) Comments RE: Comment by righard http://osnews.com/thread?323183 http://osnews.com/thread?323183 Put the following into your .bashrc and .bash_profile files:

PS1="\u@\h:\w> "
export PS1
alias rm='rm -i'
alias cp='cp -i'
alias mv='mv -i'
set -o noclobber

The first two lines will set your command line prompt to show you which directory you are in. No more need for the "pwd" command.

The three "alias" lines will for you to confirm with a yes/no prompt before deleting, copying or moving a file.

The "noclobber" line will prevent you from overwriting an existing file. If you want to overwrite a file, you'll have to manually delete the old one first.

Of course, you have to logout/login one time for these settings to take effect, because that restarts the bash shell. Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ozonehole) Comments RE[2]: Comment by righard http://osnews.com/thread?323193 http://osnews.com/thread?323193 I didn't know about noclobber. I may use that. But, the "-i" stuff just gets on my nerves.

Here's a tip for you. You don't have to log out to reread the dot files. All you need to do is at the command prompt: ". .profile". For clarification, at the command prompt, type a "dot" followed by a "space" followed by the name of the hidden resource file you wish to reread. Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (backdoc) Comments Bummer http://osnews.com/thread?323209 http://osnews.com/thread?323209 I got a bit excited when I saw this and immediately went to work installing the script and it's dependencies. What I found is that it is entirely a crapshoot whether or not this thing will even be able to find the file you're looking for. More often than not, it didn't.Edited 2008-07-16 17:20 UTC Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fsckit) Comments Not really.... http://osnews.com/thread?323233 http://osnews.com/thread?323233 You should be aware that the ext3 fs actually zero's out the block pointers in the inode when a file is deleted, so file recovery programs/scripts are not very reliable. If your file spans several blocks and if it is a binary file forget it. If your file has some identifiable text you might be able to manually rebuild the pointers if you are lucky and have lots of time.

I have had the bad experience of dropping the wrong MySQL db and was unable to recover it. I had to completely rebuild all my work. However, before that I tried everything in my power to recover the old one. At the end of the day it was just easier to re-create it.Edited 2008-07-16 19:40 UTC Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (chimby) Comments RE: Nice! http://osnews.com/thread?323421 http://osnews.com/thread?323421 Couldn't you set up a bash alias or function where rm is actually mv? Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (FunkyELF) Comments RE[3]: Comment by righard http://osnews.com/thread?323423 http://osnews.com/thread?323423 I just "source ~/.bashrc" which should source everything that normally gets sourced when you log in. Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (FunkyELF) Comments