Oh no! You just deleted a configuration file by accident by accident and need to recover it. Well if your in a *nix environment(os x, linux, etc) there still is hope! This is because when you delete a file it only deletes it from the Table of Contents, but the actual data still exists. You should be the root user to perform any task here!

1. First you will need to know what device your file was located, to find this open up a terminal and issue the command: mount | column -t | grep dev
2. The first column is the device, and the third is the folder. It only list the parent folder.
3. Now we will use grep to scan the device for the file. Issue the command grep –binary-files=text -B5 -A20 “line of the file” device. The -B5 means show 5 lines before the line found. -A20 means show 20 lines after(change this depending on a guess of approx how many lines your file is). and for the line of file you will need to recall a piece of the file word by word (works best with the first line)

Example(test it out!):

I am going to create(then delete) a text file on the device: /dev/sda1 with the contents of:

Dear Ipp,

Thank you for making the wonderful tutorial on recovering lost files! It saved me from recreating a lost config file which may of took a lot of time to recreate!

Sincerely,

A fan of tutorialninjas!

I will now use the command grep -i –binary-files=text -B5 -A20 “dear ipp” /dev/sda1 (notice: i added the -i flag to make it not case-sensitive). After it searched the partition can take a while if it is a large partition it returned:

&& $(MAKE) $(AM_MAKEFLAGS) dvi \
&& $(MAKE) $(AM_MAKEFLAGS) check \
&& $(MAKE) $(AM_MAKEFLAGS) install \
&& $(MAKE) $(AM_MAKEFLAGS) installcheck \
&& $(MAKE) $(AM_MAKEFLAGS) uninstall \
&& (test `find $$dc_install_baseDear Ipp,
Thank you for making the wonderful tutorial on recovering lost files! It saved me from recreating a lost config file which may of took a lot of time to recreate
Sincerely,
A fan of tutorialninjas!
<IfModule mod_php5.c>
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .phtml .php3
AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps
</IfModule>
root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
daemon:x:1:1:daemon:/usr/sbin:/bin/sh
bin:x:2:2:bin:/bin:/bin/sh
sys:x:3:3:sys:/dev:/bin/sh
sync:x:4:65534:sync:/bin:/bin/sync
games:x:5:60:games:/usr/games:/bin/sh
man:x:6:12:man:/var/cache/man:/bin/sh
lp:x:7:7:lp:/var/spool/lpd:/bin/sh
mail:x:8:8:mail:/var/mail:/bin/sh
news:x:9:9:news:/var/spool/news:/bin/sh
uucp:x:10:10:uucp:/var/spool/uucp:/bin/sh
proxy:x:13:13:proxy:/bin:/bin/sh
www-data:x:33:33:www-data:/var/www:/bin/sh

Notice i ddi get a lot of “garbage” but i highlighted in bold what actually was the file!

If you are on a windows machine and need to recover something you can probably boot up into “Knoppix” via a cd and do it from there, but I have not tested this method. However there are programs out there to recover lost files on a windows machine, just have to search!

This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 5:35 pm and is filed under Technology.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.