How can I undelete files that Midnight Commander deleted?

[Moderator BobC]

For some strange reason it doesn’t confirm deletes, and what happened was that I tried to use the * above the 8 and it thought I meant the numeric keypad * and marked all the files. Today, I went to delete a file, and instead it deleted all the files.

I don’t actually have any hope, but thought I’d ask. Too bad it was all the new scripts I was writing, so its almost a total loss.

Any ideas?

[Anonymous]

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powerdown shutdown ASAP (avoid further writes to the drive)

boot from liveusb, sudo apt-get install testdisk https://packages.debian.org/stretch/testdisk
It installs a program called “photorec”. Hey you might want to try the testdisk utility, but I would jump right to photorec.
Read the photorec manpage, and read here https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec_Step_By_Step#Selection_of_files_to_recover
You probably want to uncheck all the filetypes you are not interested in.

If no success with photorec, and the drive is formatted ext3 or ext4, install https://packages.debian.org/stretch/autopsy and https://packages.debian.org/stretch/extundelete

If all comes to all, debian has additional drive forensics tools available
https://packages.debian.org/stretch/scalpel
https://packages.debian.org/stretch/magicrescue
https://packages.debian.org/stretch/sleuthkit

[Member fatmac]

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Good luck with that……please, make regular back ups of your important data, it saves on this kind of hassle. 😉

Linux (& BSD) since 1999

[Moderator BobC]

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Luckily I had the editor making backup copies when I saved, and it turned out it only deleted 8 programs, so I was able to work from the backups. I need to look at Midnight Commander’s config. Deleting without a confirmation is dangerous. Also I don’t understand why I can’t type an *, but those two problems might be my fault, and not related to AntiX.

Thanks for the replies. It does surprise me that there is no easy “undelete”, but I knew I was in trouble when I didn’t find it in ~/.local or lostandfound. When I get some time I’ll simulate the problem and try 736’s ideas.

Thanks again…

PS: I found confirm options in the midnight commander setup, and they were unchecked, and I changed them. That might be specific to my system, as I might have reinstalled mc from source.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 12 months ago by BobC.

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