Failed to restore file with extundelete

Question

I accidentally deleted the file .vimrc in my $HOME directory.

I rebooted the system and accessed it as root.

Then:

$ sudo mount -o remount,ro /dev/sda5

$ sudo extundelete /dev/sda5 --restore-file /home/xralf/.vimrc

The output of the command indicates that it failed to restore .vimrc file.

Is the file already absolutely lost or is there some other possibility to recover it?

@psimon I haven't back up it for 2 years. I forgot for this and how many configurations I have made in it :-( — xralf, Jul 10 '14 at 08:24
shutdown and reboot are very busy times with regard to disk write. At least a lot more than idly sitting there. — ctrl-alt-delor, Jul 10 '14 at 10:13
In the future store stuff in revision control, and backup the repository. (I recommend git or mercurial). — ctrl-alt-delor, Jul 10 '14 at 10:14
@richard Good idea. I have to edit my `.vimrc` for my most used settings to work. I hope I haven't deleted something else important. — xralf, Jul 10 '14 at 10:22

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 10 '14 at 08:24

Most probably lost. During the reboot, your system would have written to disk many times.

I know it's too late now, but the second you noticed you'd deleted the file you should have physically powered off the machine (not gracefully shut it down - pull the power cord).

At that point you could have booted with a recovery CD/USB ensuring that the disk where the file was located isn't mounted rw.

Next, you could have used your recovery tools to try and save the file. There is no guarantee, but you'd have stood a better chance.

There are special boot disks available for this sort of task such as System Rescue CD and The Ultimate Boot CD.

Failed to restore file with extundelete

1 Answers1