Re: FAQ rm backup section outdated

[Bob Proulx]

Garreau, Alexandre wrote:
> Yet that FAQ section seems to be somewhat outdated:

It became outdated when ext3 became popular.  Because journaling file
systems zero out the data.  Originally I had said rather strongly that
when deleted the files were gone.  But then there were many people who
claimed that was incorrect and rebuked me for writing it.  Therefore
it was softened substantially.  And I didn't have the heart to just
say that once the file was removed that it was gone.  Who I am to take
away all hope when there were some cases when it was possible to
recover the file?  Especially if someone was perhaps looking on a FAT
file system on an SD card or something.

> at some point it suggests recover is packaged and right away
> installable under Debian while it’s not packaged anymore since
> Wheezy [1] (currently oldoldstable), moreover it seems its webpage
> [2], that is the second reference of the section, is a dead link.

Alas it seems there is only the archive.org version now.

  
https://web.archive.org/web/20080725005349/http://recover.sourceforge.net/linux/recover/

> The third [3], too, except I couldn't find it neither in my system at
> the aforementioned path [4], without forgetting to note that it suggests
> reading it with less, while with it being gzipped it should be read with
> zless.

That depends upon your system.  On my system less defaults to knowing
how to read gzip'd files without needing zless for it.  I didn't
realize that other systems did not provide that by default.  In any
case if you get that far then you should be able to figure it out from
there.  If not then being able to recover a deleted file is surely
impossible.

> I managed with apt-file to find its translations are still
> packaged in the packages doc-linux-fr-text and doc-linux-pl, but
> couldn't manage to find their original version, which is sad since from
> what I read in the french version, it seems to be really well written
> and maybe even quite useful for other filesystems than ext2.

Once again archive.org is an invaluable resource.

  
https://web.archive.org/web/20051220103138/http://tldp.org:80/HOWTO/Ext2fs-Undeletion.html

However that is specific to ext2.  If you are not using an ext2 file
system then it will be of little help for you.

> The fivth [5] is dead too, while since then it seems to have been
> packaged for Debian, even Wheezy nodaways, through backports, and at

A copy of the reference page is:

  
https://web.archive.org/web/20131105155135/http://developer.berlios.de/projects/ext4magic

But of course the code release is not available from there.

> least it notices it through a english sentence I personnally can't parse
> correctly near the end: “This is also packaged for some software
> distributions such as Debian probably others too.” (“This is also
> packaged for some software distributions such as Debian *and* probably
> others too.” appears less confusing to me).

Noted.  A good improvement.

> The last [6] is also dead, probably due to the move of Gentoo wiki to a
> subdomain of its [7], yet seemingly without the page in question [8].

  
https://web.archive.org/web/20081007100003/http://www.gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Move_Files_to_a_Trash

I will work through this entry and give it a refresh.  Given the
current state of the world what would you say there?

> Everything of this appears quite frustrating to me, as I always only
> knew testdisk and photorec (which I often heard cited yet I didn't see
> mentioned there), and seeing this link I hoped to easily find some
> simpler (cli instead of tui for instance) or easier (higher-level)
> utility.

First I can only say sorry for your loss.  Because I know if you had
not lost something you wanted back that you would not have gone to the
trouble of this research and then writing here.  However depending
upon the system if a file has been removed then it is likely lost
without a backup of it.

What file system type held the files now lost?  To be recoverable it
would need to be a file system that does not overwrite the data when
the file is removed.

Bob