Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 08:35:18 -0400 From: Patrick Hartling <mystify@wkstn4-208.lxr.georgetown.edu> To: freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Trying to recover lost file Message-ID: <199807311235.IAA01340@wkstn4-208.lxr.georgetown.edu>
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Last night, I did something phenomenally dumb and, to make a long story short, lost everything changed in my home directory between June 19 and last night. It was all in a tar file on a Jaz disk, and instead of restoring it, I removed it. :( I realize this is a very tall order, but is there anything I can do to get the file back? I realize that the general principle is that "once it's gone, it's gone," but I am very willing to spend hours, days, weeks, etc. trying to get this tar file back. It contains, among many other things, work I've done for my graduate research that I'd really rather not try to do over again if I can avoid it (even if it means spending more time trying to get it back than it took to do it in the first place). So, here's my situation. The file system on the Jaz disk has not been modified since I removed the tar file. I dd'd the entire file system to a file just to be safe. Running more(1) on that file shows that at least the file name of the deleted file is still in the file system in some form. A friend pointed me at fsdb(8), and I did an experiment with /usr/obj wherein I dd'd /dev/zero to a file for a couple of seconds, figured out which inode that file was at, removed it, then went to that inode to see what information was there. Everything looked the same, so now I am wondering what, if anything, can be done to "restore" that file? My file system skills and knowledge are poor at best, and some of what I've said here may sound ridiculous, but I am desperate enough to go through all 126,000+ inodes until I find something that looks vaguely like what I'm looking for (thank goodness for libedit(3)!). Thanks very much in advance. -Patrick Patrick L. Hartling | Research Assistant, ICEMT mystify@wkstn4-208.lxr.georgetown.edu | SE Lab - 1117 Black Engineering http://www.public.iastate.edu/~oz/ | http://www.icemt.iastate.edu/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-fs" in the body of the message
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