Home Directory

starr.corbin · External Since: Aug 08, 2007 Posts: 3

I just the unthinkable and just wrote over my system's auto.home
directory with an old directory from another system (doing a mirror
image of one to the other etc). Now, I don't have a home directory and
cannot find ANY trace of an important Perl Script that I wrote
recently.

Does anyone know of ANY way to recover my old home directory or find
the script that I wrote? Did I really just delet the entire file or
could it possible be dormant somewhere???? HELP!!

Matt Giwer · External Since: May 23, 2006 Posts: 295

starr.corbin DeleteThis @gmail.com wrote:
> I just the unthinkable and just wrote over my system's auto.home
> directory with an old directory from another system (doing a mirror
> image of one to the other etc). Now, I don't have a home directory and
> cannot find ANY trace of an important Perl Script that I wrote
> recently.

> Does anyone know of ANY way to recover my old home directory or find
> the script that I wrote? Did I really just delet the entire file or
> could it possible be dormant somewhere???? HELP!!

If you visit a graveyard at midnight and can find a person who will take your
first born in exchange then maybe.

Other than that, muy sympatico. It take a bit of luck to be able to recover a
single accidentally deleted file that the requires immediately knowing it
happened and umounting the drive so it is not written over. You did not delete
it. You did the overwrite as a manner of eliminating it.

It is only vaguely possible you might not have done what you think. Go root and
look for the old directory. There are no tricks just search directories looking
for it. Automated search is

find / | grep filename

presuming you remember a file or directory name that is now missing.

Worship the Backup God and it will be possible to recover. And for that get one
of the cheap USB drives around these days. It has become affordable and as easy
as cp -a /home/you at 3am in cron. That is far the best way and should be done
more intelligently but it is better than nothing to start with.

--
An entire cool summer is trumped by a warm day in January if you are a
global melter.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 3836
nizkor http://www.giwersworld.org/nizkook/nizkook.phtml
Zionism http://www.giwersworld.org/disinfo/disinfo.phtml a4

The Natural Philosopher · External Since: Jul 09, 2004 Posts: 802

starr.corbin.TakeThisOut@gmail.com wrote:
> I just the unthinkable and just wrote over my system's auto.home
> directory with an old directory from another system (doing a mirror
> image of one to the other etc). Now, I don't have a home directory and
> cannot find ANY trace of an important Perl Script that I wrote
> recently.
>
> Does anyone know of ANY way to recover my old home directory or find
> the script that I wrote? Did I really just delet the entire file or
> could it possible be dormant somewhere???? HELP!!
>
I don't have a glimmer of good news for you if you have blasted the
directory.

In short its HIGHLY likley you not only unlinked the file, but used the
sectors as well, unless the new stiff was smaller than the old., in
which case fragments might still exist in unallocated sectors.

go over the raw partition or a dd'ed image of it with an editor.

Jean-David Beyer · External Since: Jul 02, 2006 Posts: 444

starr.corbin.RemoveThis@gmail.com wrote:
> I just the unthinkable and just wrote over my system's auto.home
> directory with an old directory from another system (doing a mirror
> image of one to the other etc). Now, I don't have a home directory and
> cannot find ANY trace of an important Perl Script that I wrote
> recently.
>
> Does anyone know of ANY way to recover my old home directory or find
> the script that I wrote? Did I really just delet the entire file or
> could it possible be dormant somewhere???? HELP!!
>
If you wrote that important script before your last backup, you could get it
from there. If you have no backup, ... .

--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org
^^-^^ 20:50:01 up 12 min, 2 users, load average: 4.69, 4.13, 2.35

starr.corbin · External Since: Aug 08, 2007 Posts: 3

On Aug 8, 10:59 pm, Matt Giwer <jul... DeleteThis @tampabay.REMover.rr.com> wrote:
> starr.cor... DeleteThis @gmail.com wrote:
> > I just the unthinkable and just wrote over my system's auto.home
> > directory with an old directory from another system (doing a mirror
> > image of one to the other etc). Now, I don't have a home directory and
> > cannot find ANY trace of an important Perl Script that I wrote
> > recently.
> > Does anyone know of ANY way to recover my old home directory or find
> > the script that I wrote? Did I really just delet the entire file or
> > could it possible be dormant somewhere???? HELP!!
>
> If you visit a graveyard at midnight and can find a person who will take your
> first born in exchange then maybe.
>
> Other than that, muy sympatico. It take a bit of luck to be able to recover a
> single accidentally deleted file that the requires immediately knowing it
> happened and umounting the drive so it is not written over. You did not delete
> it. You did the overwrite as a manner of eliminating it.
>
> It is only vaguely possible you might not have done what you think. Go root and
> look for the old directory. There are no tricks just search directories looking
> for it. Automated search is
>
> find / | grep filename
>
> presuming you remember a file or directory name that is now missing.
>
> Worship the Backup God and it will be possible to recover. And for that get one
> of the cheap USB drives around these days. It has become affordable and as easy
> as cp -a /home/you at 3am in cron. That is far the best way and should be done
> more intelligently but it is better than nothing to start with.
>
> --
> An entire cool summer is trumped by a warm day in January if you are a
> global melter.
> -- The Iron Webmaster, 3836
> nizkorhttp://www.giwersworld.org/nizkook/nizkook.phtml
> Zionismhttp://www.giwersworld.org/disinfo/disinfo.phtmla4

Great news! I recovered my home directory by setting auto.mount and
the auto.home to the original configurations that I had before I
changed them. I then reran autofs and was able to log in and get
access to my files. The files were not deleted, just the path to the
files!

Thank you for all of your help!!!

The Natural Philosopher · External Since: Jul 09, 2004 Posts: 802

starr.corbin RemoveThis @gmail.com wrote:
> On Aug 8, 10:59 pm, Matt Giwer <jul... RemoveThis @tampabay.REMover.rr.com> wrote:
>> starr.cor... RemoveThis @gmail.com wrote:
>>> I just the unthinkable and just wrote over my system's auto.home
>>> directory with an old directory from another system (doing a mirror
>>> image of one to the other etc). Now, I don't have a home directory and
>>> cannot find ANY trace of an important Perl Script that I wrote
>>> recently.
>>> Does anyone know of ANY way to recover my old home directory or find
>>> the script that I wrote? Did I really just delet the entire file or
>>> could it possible be dormant somewhere???? HELP!!
>> If you visit a graveyard at midnight and can find a person who will take your
>> first born in exchange then maybe.
>>
>> Other than that, muy sympatico. It take a bit of luck to be able to recover a
>> single accidentally deleted file that the requires immediately knowing it
>> happened and umounting the drive so it is not written over. You did not delete
>> it. You did the overwrite as a manner of eliminating it.
>>
>> It is only vaguely possible you might not have done what you think. Go root and
>> look for the old directory. There are no tricks just search directories looking
>> for it. Automated search is
>>
>> find / | grep filename
>>
>> presuming you remember a file or directory name that is now missing.
>>
>> Worship the Backup God and it will be possible to recover. And for that get one
>> of the cheap USB drives around these days. It has become affordable and as easy
>> as cp -a /home/you at 3am in cron. That is far the best way and should be done
>> more intelligently but it is better than nothing to start with.
>>
>> --
>> An entire cool summer is trumped by a warm day in January if you are a
>> global melter.
>> -- The Iron Webmaster, 3836
>> nizkorhttp://www.giwersworld.org/nizkook/nizkook.phtml
>> Zionismhttp://www.giwersworld.org/disinfo/disinfo.phtmla4
>
> Great news! I recovered my home directory by setting auto.mount and
> the auto.home to the original configurations that I had before I
> changed them. I then reran autofs and was able to log in and get
> access to my files. The files were not deleted, just the path to the
> files!
>
> Thank you for all of your help!!!
>
Oh..you mounted something else on top of the original data tree..we've
all done that in a fit of ignorance.